Category: Ghana

Enter the Resilience Through Our Eyes photo call

Let’s use a different lens to tell the story of Africa’s urban resilience!

If you are a young, aspiring photographer living in Nairobi, Mwanza, Accra, Windhoek or Lusaka, here is your chance to take your passion for storytelling to the next level!

Enter the Resilience Through Our Eyes photo call to document urban resilience with mentorship and support. This training programme is being offered by the Resilience Initiative Africa (RIA), which aims to strengthen urban resilience by helping African communities understand risks and prevent disasters.

In support of this mission, RIA is offering intensive training to 12 budding photographers, preferably from informal settlements. Applicants need to be available to attend a three-day in-person training session in November and participate in a three-month mentorship and fieldwork programme between December 2025 and February 2026.

This intensive skills development programme will culminate in the Resilience Through Our Eyes photographic exhibition in March 2026.

You can apply if you:

• Are 18 to 35 years of age
• Live in Nairobi, Mwanza, Accra, Windhoek or Lusaka
• Live in an informal settlement and are part of a federation
• Are passionate about using photography and visual storytelling to document resilience in vulnerable communities
• Are available to attend the theory and practical components of the training
• Possess at least basic photography skills (advantageous)

How to apply:

• Submit three of your best photos
• Write a paragraph explaining why you’re a good fit for the Resilience Through Our Eyes photographic training programme

To apply, please click here to enter.

Deadline: 24 October 2025

Voicing the urban poor: New report highlights experiences from an energy justice programme

A new report published in the Field Actions Science Reports aims at voicing the urban poor and their experiences from the Energy Justice Programme.

Authors David Sheridan the Slum Dwellers International (SDI) Energy Justice Programme (EJP) coordinator, Mwaura Njogu a Renewable Energy Engineering Consultant, Andrew Maki the Co-director of Justice and Empowerment Initiatives (JEI) and Frederick Agyemang the Project coordinator EJP Ghana all work within the SDI Network.

SDI is committed to project typologies that produce learning at scale around clean energy access as part of our informal settlement upgrading agenda and empower the urban poor. Since 2014, we have been actively involved in the field of access to energy in Africa, India and the Philippines with our SDI Energy Justice Programme leverages community-led collection of disaggregated energy access data, community empowerment programmes and pro-poor access models. With the growing need for access in slums, our model offers bottom-up, innovative and adaptable methodological options for catalysing pro-poor change at settle, city and global levels.

Read the full report here.

The EJP is a demonstrative case study of SDI’s actions to improve access to essential services in slums and thereby empower the urban poor. The programme uses all of SDI’s tools, including the Know Your City (KYC) data collection programme, to generate grassroots and tailor-made solutions to energy access in slums. 

Energy for the urban poor

Energy is a key condition for developing essential services in these neighbourhoods. SDI’s EJP has active projects in 12 countries, namely Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, South Africa, Namibia, India and the Philippines which has enabled affiliate federations to provide improved energy access. Approximately 25 000 distinct households with nearly 100 000 beneficiaries in total benefitting from the improvements. 

According to the report, lack of access to sustainable energy is a significant barrier to slum development. The EJP sets out to leverage SDI’s core rituals of community-led settlement profiling, women-led savings groups and peer-to-peer exchanges to develop innovative solutions to critical service delivery gaps and scalable energy access projects to integrate into wider settlement upgrading programmes.

Data products produced as outputs from the EJP, such as this report, are vital tools for influencing and negotiating with key stakeholders.

The longstanding work of SDI’s Kenyan affiliate with the Nairobi City County Government (NCCG) resulted in the Mukuru informal settlements being designated as a Special Planning Area in 2017. This breakthrough subsequently demonstrated the application of community mobilisation methodologies and participatory approaches to slum re-development planning and implementation. In collaboration with NCCG, Kenya’s SDI affiliate coordinated the work of developing a comprehensive spatial plan for the redevelopment of Mukuru.

This model is a great example of utilising SDI’s work as evidence and negotiating with influential decision-makers. 

The report highlights, that SDI’s Energy Justice Programmes ratchet effect which reveals that the evidence can be used to influence decision-makers, and cooperate with them (public, private, local and international), which can result in the adoption of contextual legal frameworks, just like Mukuru SPA and may assist in guaranteeing the institutionalised co-creation process in the long-term. 

Learnings

The report emphasises some key learnings in terms of project design and impacts, which were identified between the inception of the EJP and now. According to the reports, there is no “one size fits all” approach to a project. The authors do not propose a unique solution to each context, but rather a strong methodology to legitimise each energy solution emerging from and required in a specific context. 

Savings groups can fund solar energy systems. Within the SDI network, savings groups have been particularly adapted to the improvement of energy access in African slums. These groups can be a practical financing solution, especially for the EJP, with the model itself being easily replicable and adaptable. 

Training community members on the technical aspects of solar systems is integral to the implementation plan. 

Solar energy systems have great spillover effects. The transition to low-carbon energy systems is increasingly considered an important point in delivering energy for urban-poor communities. This recognises that communities must play an instrumental role in the implementation and management of these energy transitions. Thus far transitions have been slow, but by including communities to drive and co-create the opportunities for energy transitions, the adoption of innovative technologies may be accelerated, and more inclusive in terms of policy development and it enables capacity and skills building to support new and current economic activities. 

Download the full report.

From Recovery to Resilience: Community-led Responses to Covid-19 in Informal Settlements

In 2020, as Covid-19 spread rapidly across the cities where SDI is active, federations recognised the need for both urgent responses to the acute humanitarian crises facing their communities and longer-term strategies to engage with government and other stakeholders to address the prolonged effects of this global crisis. Through a partnership supported by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), Cities Alliance , and Slum Dwellers International (SDI) we were able to channel much needed resources to organised communities of the urban poor in 17 countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America to facilitate these processes.

Over the past 20 months, the Covid-19 pandemic and pandemic responses such as government lockdowns have highlighted and exacerbated many of the chronic stresses urban poor communities live with and struggle against daily. As such, the strategies supported by this SDI / Cities Alliance partnership are about more than Covid-19 response and recovery: they are about sustainable, inclusive, and pro-poor urban development that provides communities with meaningful opportunities to work with government and other stakeholders to address issues such as food security, access to livelihood opportunities, skills training, and basic services like water and sanitation, as well as the need for accurate slum data to drive government responses in times of crisis.

SDI’s urban poor federations have shown that they have the social networks and systems in place to respond efficiently and effectively to disasters and chronic stressors. They have demonstrated their critical role to governments and development partners as reliable actors at the forefront of provision of information on and services to the most vulnerable. Indeed, with lockdowns and government restrictions, many external organisations were unable to access the vulnerable communities where SDI federations live and work, highlighting the immense value of working directly with these communities. 

The following examples highlight how federations have the information, knowledge, and skills to work with government and other stakeholders to implement effective, scalable solutions to chronic and acute urban challenges.

Improved public health and safety

Many residents in slums live in overcrowded homes without access to on-site water or sanitation and face the constant threat of forced eviction. This means that preventative Covid-19 measures such as hand-washing, disinfecting, physical distancing, and quarantine are often impossible for the urban poor.

Outcome Story: Bridging Knowledge and PPE Gaps in Tanzania

There was a gap in knowledge on Covid-19 awareness, especially in informal settlements. Through this project, federation teams have been able to provide support to ensure that communities and schools awareness and knowledge on the pandemic is enhanced and precautions are being taken against the pandemic. This went hand in hand with the provision of hand washing facilities and PPE in places which had no facilities such as in market places and schools. 

This has contributed to behavior change in terms of improving hygiene as a way to stop the spread of Covid-19. Communities now have the knowledge and facilities to wash hands. Correct information sharing around Covid-19 has helped groups such as boda boda drivers (motorcycle taxis), food vendors, and school children which had limited access to information about the pandemic. Interactions with such groups provided an opportunity for them to ask questions and seek clarifications, which enhanced their understanding on prevention and treatment methods. Another significant outcome is the recognition of the Tanzanian SDI Alliance as a partner in addressing pandemics by the government. This has improved the relationship and established new ones with other units/departments within the municipalities such as the public health unit and the regional office. These relationships will help to provide more engagement and opportunities for the federation, and the alliance in general as well to discuss and negotiate further interventions related to the health and public safety of people living in informal settlements. The pandemic has taught us lessons on hygiene promotion, in particular hand washing behaviors, which is a serious issue the community needs to practice beyond the pandemic.

The federation led the process of planning and implementation of these activities and interventions. This included gathering information from different groups on the pandemic, identifying needs, and supporting awareness as facilitators in schools, markets, households, and settlements.

In Ghana, the federation was able to identify and map Covid-19 hotspots. Community members were trained to manufacture and install hand washing stations for community use within these hotspots. Additionally, the grant enabled the installation of in-yard water connections to poor and vulnerable households in slums/informal settlements to increase access to water supply. In Zambia, the federation was able to support provisional WASH interventions and set precedents for water provision to slum communities through community-led processes. Through the provision of water storage and hand-washing facilities in slums, communities are now able to regularly wash their hands in public places and this also enabled market committees to enforce preventive regulations since the infrastructure to wash hands is now available. At the household level the Zambia Alliance identified 75 women with health vulnerabilities who are at greater risk when collecting water from congested public taps. Additionally, through engagement meetings with water trusts and utility companies the federation was able to lobby for pro-poor water subsidies.

Enhanced livelihoods

Despite the negative effect and impact to individuals, communities, and countries the Covid-19 response actions have also brought opportunities with them. Some which came as a result of this programme are income generating projects, for example liquid soap-making and sewing of reusable face masks respectively have equipped community members with skills which some families are now using to earn a living. Federation members in Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe were trained in sewing reusable face masks and the production of liquid soap and sanitizers. In Malawi, federation women and youth trained in design and tailoring produced and distributed 17,300 reusable face masks to vulnerable members of the community and primary school going children.

Outcome Story: Building Resilient Livelihoods in Zambia

The Zambia SDI Alliance facilitated trainings to capacitate slum dwellers with skills necessary to build resilient livelihoods. The trainings were conducted in two typologies namely sack gardening/organic farming and metal fabrication. Sack gardening involves the use of biodegradable waste in urban agriculture to provide nutritional support and sustainable livelihoods. At household level, sack gardens significantly reduced food shortages and helped in reducing garbage that has been indiscriminately disposed of in informal settlements, thereby creating healthy and safe environments. Sack gardens have a lower production cost as their main input is organic waste, which is readily available in informal settlements. The sack gardening enterprise consumes about 20 tons of organic waste in a month and with the plans to scale up production, the enterprises will be a significant consumer of garbage being produced in informal settlements. Besides the environmental benefits of the enterprises, slum dwellers secured resilient livelihoods that are set to provide employment to more slum dwellers when the intervention is scaled up.

Metal fabrication training also brought some positive changes to youths, as it created an opportunity for them to produce products that are on demand as well as helping their communities to meet their community demands. Currently the enterprise has been  instrumental in harnessing fabrication techniques for  Covid-19 prevention. The enterprise created a touch-less hand washing facility that has special features to avoid contact with the facility. The facilities have since been distributed into public spaces as well as for other interested organizations. The enterprise has created a viable livelihood for the unemployed youths and this intervention will continue into all settlements to create local technology that can easily be managed and maintained locally.

Pro-poor data driven development

SDI affiliates adapted Know Your City profiling and mapping tools to gather household and settlement level data on the impacts of Covid-19 on the urban poor. In Zimbabwe, youth were trained on data collection tools used to collect information on the level of awareness and community preparedness to Covid-19 as well as the pandemic’s impact on community members in terms of livelihoods, housing, and WASH. In the Philippines, the federation undertook a vulnerability mapping of 22 communities in which localized Covid-19 hotspot maps were produced and included the identification of households with vulnerable groups such as seniors, children, persons with disabilities, and pregnant women. In Botswana, the federation interviewed 33 savings groups to gather information on how Covid-19 has impacted the livelihoods and savings of urban poor communities. Findings revealed that many members stopped saving due to loss of employment and income. Most of the small businesses collapsed during the first lockdown and many of the street vendors that would travel across the border to buy their goods were no longer able to work with borders being closed. Students also faced hardships due to disruptions in education. Findings also showed that schools not only provide education but also provide students with social development skills. The pandemic has contributed to an increase in psychological and economic pressure leaving many without jobs or the ability to put food on the table, which has also highlighted the spike in gender-based violence.

Outcome Story: Using Community Data to Improve Basic Service Access in India

As part of this project, slum profiling and collecting data on community toilets was undertaken from 10 settlements across 10 cities. While conducting these profiles, Mahila Milan leaders realized the different issues communities are facing in the area of water, sanitation, drainage, jobs, etc. They found out which settlements have or lack access to toilets, what water facilities are available to residents, what mechanisms are in place to collect garbage, and how people are dealing with job issues. In Pimpri, Mahila Milan leader Rehana highlighted how in one of the settlements the community toilet that was constructed in 2018 was neither connected to the main sewer line nor was maintained properly which meant people were facing difficulties using the toilet. The women in the settlement approached the local councilor, spoke to him about the problem, and sought his support to fix it. In her own settlement, the drainage water enters people’s homes especially during the rains giving rise to many water borne diseases and skin infections. The dirty water from the community toilet as well as drainage water from individual houses is let out into one drainage line that causes this problem. They have been approaching the local councilor for the last five months but there was no relief. They again visited the local councilor and said that if you don’t take it up then we will have to approach the ward. We work for an NGO and are aware of all the processes and procedures that need to be done to sort out issues. They then got in touch with the health department in the ward office, did site visits, and within eight days they had laid down new drainage pipes. Six such pipes need to be laid down in the settlement in different places which will be completed soon.  

Similarly, the Mahila Milan leaders from Surat were facing drainage issues where water would overflow onto the roads and into the homes. Coordinating and negotiating with the local councilor and ward, they were able to resolve the problem.

In both cities these problems arose during lockdown and community members could not travel to the ward office. However, the Mahila Milan women were adamant to resolve their problems and so they started communicating with the officials via phone on a daily basis until the problem was resolved. At times the officials try to avoid these women, don’t take their calls, and say they forgot what it was about, but the women say even if we have to call them 100 times, we do that and should keep doing it. This is a way of showing how serious the organization and communities are about resolving their own issues, how accountable the leaders feel for their own settlement and people, and how this can be a means of strengthening their relationship with the city and authorities. The end result has been that these women are now called by the city to help them with certain programs or implementing schemes that benefit the city as well as communities. They also get an opportunity to start thinking of upgrading their settlements in different ways.

The Sierra Leone SDI Alliance, in consultation with Freetown City Council (FCC), developed an app (FISCOVIDATA) and live dashboard in which communities can identify hotspots and link to government service providers in real time. The mobile app and dashboard provides two-way communication – it relays information to appropriate authorities and notifies communities of actions taken. Piloted in 10 specific slums, this community-based approach has proven that empowering communities to mobilise actions for response and mitigation of health pandemics, is an effective way to mitigate the spread. This resulted in the reversal of the spread of Covid-19 in these settlements. This work has attracted the interest of other partners, namely Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre (SLURC) and College of Medicine and Allied Health Sciences (COMAHS) to collaboratively work with DICOVERC to develop the app further so as to intervene in any future health emergencies.

Institutional collaboration between the urban poor and government

The need to address basic services, health needs, and decent shelter is critical in the Covid-19 fight and this project supported communities to highlight their plight and push for meaningful change. Applying rules created for the formal city into an informal settlement is challenging and may paralyze the action. Agreements need to be reached and governments need to find flexibility on policies and regulations so that formal interventions can take place in informal settlements. In South Africa, the Federation in the North West province started to implement the Asivikelane campaign in October 2021. The campaign collects data about basic service delivery (water, sanitation, and waste removal) in 21 informal settlements and uses this information to pressurize local municipalities to deliver. Fifteen settlements were mobilized to select 35 representatives to join a meeting with the Madibeng Administrator, the Department of Electricity, the Department of Human Settlements, and the Housing Development Agency as a united front. Through multiple engagements, the SA SDI Alliance is now in the process of signing an official MOU with the Madibeng municipality that will bind the municipality to the working partnership with the Federation in terms of addressing informal settlement upgrading, housing delivery, and formalizing structures.

Ghana SDI Alliance Community Response to Covid-19

An update from the Ghana SDI Alliance, comprised of Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) and People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements – Ghana. 

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Introduction

Following the confirmation of positive Covid-19 cases in Ghana, the Alliance quickened plans to establish the Community-Led Response and Management of the Coronavirus Disease-19 (CLeRMoC-19) response teams in slums, mostly in the Greater Accra Region of Ghana where a high number of positive cases were recorded.

CLeRMoC-19 Mitigation Responses

The Ghana Alliance’s response to the pandemic was purely community led and involved establishing community coordinating committees, community volunteers, community coordinating centres, pre-triggering meetings with community leaders, municipal and metropolitan health officers, supply of PPEs and community sensitisation activities.

The initiative covered mostly Zongos, inner-cities and slums in the Greater Accra Region, with the aim of creating community level response structures to compliment national level efforts to calm to pandemic.

Supplies such as Veronica buckets, face masks, hand gloves, hand sanitisers, sanitary wipes, hand wash stands and other PPEs were given out in the communities.  Cooked and non-cooked food were shared on daily basis, especially to persons with disabilities in the communities. Community sensitisation on behaviour change education campaigns were carried out as well to ensure residents become aware of the situation and prepare towards any effect.

Prevention responses 

The rapid spread of the virus revealed that case management activities were not sufficient to control the disease, and that social mobilisation and community engagement were essential to all aspects of the coronavirus response. Prevention responses in the communities included: proper hand washing with soap under running water, wearing of face mask, avoiding crowded spots, self-quarantine, isolation of infected persons, early reporting of symptoms, and establishing hand washing kits at hotspots in the target communities.

Our prevention responses took cognisance of the high densities of populations in the Zongos, inner-cities and slums, which do not have adequate health or other infrastructures to support community resilience against Covid-19. For example, the settlement of Old Fadama is home to over 120,000 people, Sabon Zongo has over 6,500 residents, Osu Klottey is heavily occupied with over 80,000 people, and Amui Dzor in Ashaiman is equally densely populated settlement.  Though resources were limited, CLeRMoC-19 intervention responses reduced the vulnerability of the target communities to the pandemic by bringing preventive support services closer to the people.

Outcome of Activities Implemented

One most important results of the CLeRMoC-19 are the great engagement of the community in activities resulting in the identification and preparation of measures to decrease risks and protect vulnerable groups, including older people and those with underlying health conditions.

Secondly, CLeRMoC-19 served a critical role in securing the continuity of the supply chain for essential commodities and services in the communities. The intervention advocated and ensured that the fundamental rights of vulnerable groups are safeguarded, that they have access to testing and health-care services, and that they are included in national programmes to receive information and assistance. It further prevented, anticipated and addressed risks of violence, discrimination, marginalisation and xenophobia towards people of concern by enhancing awareness and understanding of the COVID-19 pandemic at community level, ensuring responsibility and management.

Generally, CLeRMoC-19 has demonstrated to be a modality for the communities to take ownership of their safety by creating and sustaining their own response and management strategies against Covid-19.

Results and impact of CLeRMoC-19

• The initiative established Corona Virus Disease coordinating centres in Zongos, Inner-Cities and Slums (ZINCS) plus monitoring surveillance groups in some markets and support persons with disability (PwDs).
• CLeRMoC-19 identified and selected responsible persons from within ZINCS as Covid-19 coordinating committees and volunteers to partner with environmental health officers of the assemblies inside their communities.
• CLeRMoC-19 provided the communities with the means to conduct their own appraisal and analysis, their safety regarding the disease, and the consequences if nothing is done.
• The community-led initiative instilled a feeling of urgency in engaging in community actions that will prevent the community experiencing infections.
• To complement national efforts, CLeRMoC-19 supported the National COVID 19 team in the implementation of the identified solutions and actions adopted.
• CLeRMoC-19 also supported Community Health Nurses and Environmental Health Officers to embark on sustained and intense hygiene promotion campaigns at the community level.
• CLeRMoC-19 has been the most prominent and popular provider of hand washing materials at community level, creating centres at vantage places using local technology such as tippy taps, veronica buckets etc.
• Other PPEs provided under the initiative include face masks, hand gloves, sanitary wipes, medical overall and medical goggles for front line workers.
• Provided education and training on prevention
• Scaled up using social support system and provision of essentials such as food and water to reach out to the most vulnerable such as Persons with Disability and Kayaye
• The community-led response team provided onsite education and training on prevention of COVID-19 to residents. But broadly, the intervention sought to achieve the following:

1. Provide PPEs for community use
2. Encourage the youth to develop community level hand washing kits
3. Ensure early community detection of symptoms and seeking early treatment to health services
4. Ensure social distancing and other protocols are observed in the target communities
5. Avoiding any body contact and body fluids by community members
6. Ensure constant hand washing with soap under running water in the target communities
7. Community compliance to contact tracing and quarantine protocols

Major Highlights

Community entry and pre-triggering meetings – CLeRMoC-19 initially started with community entry meetings lead by PD in collaboration with the federation in all the target communities. The meetings enabled the communities to mobilise support through public announcements using gong-gong, the religious groups, tribal chiefs, transport associations, food vendors, scrap dealers and facility managers (toilet/bath house).  Six community entry and preparatory meetings – one in each target community were organised.

Partnerships and Collaborations

The Ghana Alliance collaborated effectively with local and international partners to carry out the activities.  Metropolitan/Municipal Assemblies provided Environmental Health Officers to train community coordinating committees and volunteers to carry out community education. International NGO OXFAM donated PPEs for supply to the communities. Some religious institutions based in South Africa but with branches in Ghana also donated food items and PPEs to our course. Other individuals in their own small ways donated sanitisers to the Alliance for distribution to communities.

The Alliance is currently exploring further partnership with UN Habitat, WIEGO, National Board for Small Scale Industries (NBSSI) and others in the Covid-19 fight. 

Conclusion

In conclusion, the Community-Led Response and Management of Covid-19 ensured that material supplies such as face masks, hand gloves, medical overall, tissues, tip-taps, veronica buckets, soap and hand sanitisers were provided in Zongos, inner-cities, slums, markets and other vulnerable groups as a prevention against the spread of Coronavirus.

Additionally, implementation of community-led campaigns on hygiene promotion, logistical support to environmental health officers, and community collaboration have been successful. The campaign built community knowledge, encouraged involvement, responsibility and a sustainable process on hand washing, use of sanitisers, social distancing and instilled confidence in community members to stand against COVID-19 pandemic.

Ghanaian Federation & People’s Dialogue: Responses to COVID-19

On behalf of the Ghanian Federation of the Urban Poor and People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements – SDI presents the work to fight COVID-19 across Accra.

A community-led management and response to the COVID-19 pandemic (CLeMRoC) is being actioned in collaboration with Accra Municipal Assembly, and other civil society organisations has been launched in Accra. The response team consists of community leaders, environmental health officers of Accra Metropolitan Assembly (AMA). Led by the Federation in Ghana, they are supported by People’s Dialogue on Human Settlements.

The aim of CLeMRoC is is to enhance sensitization, education and behavior change in people living in informal settlements and to influence the community response of the pandemic. The target communities within Accra include: Old Fadama, Osu Alata, Sabon Zongo, Agbogbloshie, Madina, Sukura, Ashaiman, Nungua, Teshie with ongoing work in several other communities.

Farouk Braimah, Executive Director at People’s Dialogue, reflects on the dire impacts that COVID-19 will have on informal settlements, shedding light on the ongoing pervasive issues of a severe lack of service delivery to the most vulnerable.

“When it comes to hygiene protection, why do we think this time it will work? It is about hygiene, washing hands, eating well, resting – these are the protocols, and there is nothing new about this. They have never worked in slums//informal settlements. How do we find solutions that respond to our unusual circumstances, that work in the informal settlements?”

CLeMRoC has formed an interim Community Coordination Centre (CCC) where all issues against the fight of COVID-19 will be anchored. These include: external relations, messaging via various formats, knowledge management, documentation, dissemination of learning & lessons, and interfacing with officials collaborating on efforts to support communities through participatory planning & advocacy. Also coordinating supplies, resource mobilization and media work.

The priority needs emerge as pre-existing challenges that are further exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. There are limited existing health facilities and resources to manage and care for affected patients. As of 24th March 2020, when CLeMRoC was launched, the following items were of urgent need in relation to health (PPE) such as: masks and gloves, tissues, tippy taps, veronica buckets, soap & hand sanitizers. With the need to improve PPE on all levels, especially personal hygiene protection, hand washing training on developing tippy taps and veronica bucket with taps. Ongoing needs for food assistance to those whose livelihoods are impacted and funds for volunteers who are working on trainings in the community remain fundamental to the Federation’s response.

Community members being sensitized on Tippy Taps.

Please keep following SDI as we highlight the initiatives of SDI affiliates across Africa, Asia & Latin America in the fight against COVID-19 to support the most vulnerable throughout this pandemic.

Know Your City: the Process, the Platform, and the Campaign

The end of 2017 marked the end of a four-year strategic planning period for SDI and the close-out of various projects and contracts in support of implementation of that plan. To report on the successes, challenges, and impact of our work over that time, SDI produced a Basket Fund Close Out report, available in full here. In this series of blog posts, we present excerpts from this report that highlight some of the key learnings and impact of our work over the past four years and point towards areas for continued growth in the new Strategic Plan, launched this year.

Fundamental to effective learning and influence is the quality and accessibility of the knowledge produced. SDI’s commitment to increased rigour in settlement profiling meant that 2013 – 2017 was a watershed period for this work which has come to be known widely as SDI’s Know Your City work and campaign.

The Process

Since the SDI network was founded, grassroots profiling, enumeration and mapping has been at the heart of the organizing process. Pioneered by slum and pavement dwellers in India, community profiles and enumerations have served to organize the urban poor and make informal settlements visible to city authorities throughout the Global South. These data then ground dialogue and partnerships between communities and local government aimed at improved security of tenure, basic services and housing. As such, the information becomes power for the organized slum dwellers who gathered it. Power balances shift between the community and city officials. Instead of beggars or protesters, the community asks officials to recognize them as partners with information and ideas for how to make changes that will benefit cities and informal settlements. For over 20 years, SDI’s peer-to-peer exchange programs have helped to spread and refine the practise of community-led profiling and enumeration from the congested slums of Mumbai throughout SDI’s network of close to 30 federations. As more and more federations undertook the process, it became clear that the data could play a powerful role in global advocacy aimed at enhancing the hand of each local federation to influence urban policy and practice. Without a measure of standardization in data collection tools and a transition to digital data management, the aggregation and dissemination of data is limited. SDI federations agreed to design a single, standardized informal settlement profile tool and to adopt and co-design support technologies to enhance data accessibility.

The Platform

The decision was made to create a Know Your City (KYC) data platform to house and analyze the SDI network’s slum settlement data. The federations remained laser focused on their principles and insisted: technological support and standardization could not substitute face-to-face engagement; the technology had to be simple and was pointless if not useful to local communities; and the transition had to ensure it did not exclude those without technological capacity. Two iterations of the KYC platform have been developed in conjunction with community profilers and enumerators throughout the network. KYC 1.0 proved that SDI’s profiling and enumeration processes could use standardized tools to enable global aggregation, while preserving the community organizing and inclusive social processes that give SDI’s data its power. KYC 2.0 proved this data would be of tremendous use to communities, governments and development partners in understanding informality and guiding upgrading plans. KYC 3.0 seeks to institutionalize people-driven data as the core starting point for building and monitoring inclusive and resilient city development. To do so, the platform and the community process must step up to yet another level in terms of its accessibility, data rigor, and data visualizations. This new iteration will reflect SDI’s improved TOC and measurement of resilience outcomes and will be housed on SDI’s own platform built in Bangalore by the federation’s partners.

The Campaign

Community-managed profiling and mapping and the KYC data platform are the two legs upon which the Know Your City campaign stands. In 2014, SDI, Cities Alliance and UCLG-A launched the Know Your City campaign in order to promote the institutionalization of people-driven data in government and development partner programing. At the conclusion of 2016, SDI signed a new MOU with UCLG-A to expand partner cities and is working with Cities Alliance to embed people-driven data in all its global programing, monitoring and evaluation. Cities Alliance has supported a Joint Work Program (JWP) to expand the reach of KYC. The Know Your City campaign has proven its capacity to anchor partnership through the organization of slum dwellers at city scale to gather data on the informal settlements. Local government-community partnerships then use this data to set baselines, plan and monitor development interventions, inform policy and practice, co-produce upgrading agendas, and jointly implement urban development that fully capitalizes on the comparative advantages of each party. SDI is partnering with the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR) to expand the campaign throughout Asia. In phase 1, settlement profiling was carried out by communities in Davao Philippines; Jhenaidah, Bangladesh; Jogjakarta, Indonesia; Yangon, Myanmar; and Battambang, Cambodia.

Change Story 2: KYC Campaign Touches Down in Latin America

This year, SDI expanded the Know Your City campaign to Latin America to support organized urban poor communities looking to use community-led profiling and mapping to catalyze dialogue with government and/or other potential collaborators to improve the lives of the poor. Small support grants for this work will be available to organizations who show that organized urban poor communities are working toward outcome level change in their settlement or city linked to: Improved public health and safety; Improved livelihoods; Improved land tenure security; or, Improved strategic influence of the urban poor.

Selected groups will have access to the standarized KYC profiling tools, use of the KYC platform and increased visibility as part of the KYC campaign. The expansion of KYC to Latin American provides an opportunity to connect and network urban poor social movements in Latin America, Africa, and Asia. At the World Urban Forum, SDI secured preliminary commitments from UCLG and partnersh such as TECHO and HFHI to partner in this initiative.

In Recife, the community and support organization INTERAÇÃO (SDI’s Brazil Affiliate) and Habitat for Humanity International are using the KYC framework to strengthen the organization and capacities of poor and vulnerable groups threatened by eviction. Using the data, communities can defend and negotiate for improve tenure security and services. Particular importance will be given to the residents of informal/precarious settlements in the areas most valued and subject to real estate pressure. Information on the different favelas will also be used to develop a city-scale vision that communities will use in proposing or establishing alliances and influencing urban policies. This will serve to strengthen the involvement of these communities and influence the revision process of the Recife Master Plan through spaces for dialogue with the local government in the perspective of ensuring adequate housing spaces for the poorest.

Profiling Progress per Hub, 2013-2017

Sharper Learning Focus: A Culture of Learning By and for the Poor

The end of 2017 marked the end of a four-year strategic planning period for SDI and the close-out of various projects and contracts in support of implementation of that plan. To report on the successes, challenges, and impact of our work over that time, SDI produced a Basket Fund Close Out report, available in full here. In this series of blog posts, we present excerpts from this report that highlight some of the key learnings and impact of our work over the past four years and point towards areas for continued growth in the new Strategic Plan, launched this year.

The first outcome towards which the SDI network was working over the course of the last Strategic Plan was: SDI affiliated federations apply tools for learning and knowledge with sharper focus and rigour.

Throughout the 2013-2018 period, the city learning centers (identified at the outset of the last Strategic Plan) in Kampala, Accra, Cape Town, and Mumbai played a central role in the development of city-wide organizing and partnerships throughout the network. Targeted exchange programs to and from these centers for both community members and their government partners have been central to this effort.

In the Kampala learning center, citywide community organizing and slum profiling and mapping support robust participatory planning forums that have shaped city policy and practice and catalysed the implementation of a range of slum upgrading projects. Learning exchanges to and from Kampala have focused on topics ranging from innovative sanitation technology to construction methods to the development of land-sharing models for inner city land-based finance to large-scale mixed-use development, incorporating both low-cost housing and informal market upgrades to the development of the SDI network’s first youth media team to citywide profiling and mapping of Kampala’s slums. This learning has resulted in the implementation of a number innovative projects within Kampala as well as across the SDI network where federations have learned from the Kampala federation. As a result of this work, an MOU was signed between the federation and the Kampala Capital City Authority (KCCA) establishing an Advisory Committee for Urban Renewal, chaired by the KCCA Executive Director.

In the Cape Town learning center, the federation (FEDUP) and Informal Settlement Network (ISN) have also undertaken profiling, enumeration and mapping at city scale. Enumeration of 18,000 structures and profiling of 106 settlements was undertaken as part of two government tenders, representing both a massive achievement in terms of recognition of the quality of community-collected data on informal settlements, and a distinct challenge in terms of creating a service-provider/client relationship between organized communities of the urban poor and government.

SDI identified Cape Town as a learning center in order to ensure representation of middle income countries with well-resourced cities and highly regularized planning frameworks. Federations in such cities can struggle to be viewed as partners in development and parties to decision-making. A related paradox is that successful community precedents are taken up by the government and replicated, but when replicated the central success element of community participation gets lost (eg. Peoples Housing Process (PHP) and re-blocking).

Some important learning opportunities in Cape Town from the 2013 – 2017 period include the re-blocking of informal settlements to improve accessibility, reduce risk of shack fires, flooding, and crime, and allow for basic service extension; community-led research and enterprise development into clean cooking technologies; open space upgrading to include a drainage system, community halls, children’s playground, and sanitation facilities; a community-driven finance facility that manages contributions from government and donor partners towards slum upgrading projects; and the establishment of a Solid Waste Network with over 350 informal waste pickers.

In the Accra learning center, the federation’s participation in the Cities Alliance-funded Land, Services, and Citizenship Program dramatically increased the scale and impact of its work and made it an important learning center in SDI’s West Africa region. As part of the program, the Ghana federation, GHAFUP, was the lead community partner charged with mobilizing savings schemes at city scale, profiling, enumerating, and mapping Accra’s settlements, establishing settlement forums, organizing communities to participate in city forums, contributing to the drafting of national urban policies, and designing and implementing community slum upgrading projects such as sanitation units, water taps, and footpaths. Exchanges to and from this learning center served to introduce lessons from the Uganda Country Program (TSUPU), and spread these throughout Ghana and into Liberia, to which Cities Alliance introduced a Country Program most recently. Of late, the Accra learning center has been at the forefront of engagements seeking to understand what resilience and climate change adaptation should look like in cities characterized by informality – engaging in rich reflections with government partners on their city-wide profiling data.

Additional important learning opportunities supported by Accra from 2013-2018 include citywide slum profiling and mapping – including serving mapping –  making the Ghana SDI alliance a nationally recognised source for slum data and knowledge; the development of an active youth component engaged in data collection, media production, toilet construction, and solar energy, and waste management; precedent setting solar energy and clean cooking projects; and strong contribution to the National Urban Policy Framework and Action Plan.

The Mumbai learning center is unique in its offering for knowledge applicable to working at a massive scale. Mega cities throughout the network look to Mumbai for lessons on how to meet some of the most obstinate issues facing millions of slum dwellers – namely climate change, mega infrastructural investments and their impact on the poor, entrenched inequality and intergenerational exclusion. Highly productive exchanges to and from the Mumbai learning center have resulted in stronger partnerships between federations and city governments and more ambitious aspirations for slum upgrading by these partners, especially in Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, and South Africa.

Some important learning opportunities supported by Mumbai from 2013-2018 include digitizing of savings records to increase accountability and transparency; incorporation of a vulnerability index into KYC settlement profiles; explorations around the use of solar power to subsidize the cost of maintenance at housing relocation sites; in influencing private sector investment protocols to assess impact on the city’s poorest and most vulnerable.

SDI’s Basket Fund represents a commitment from SDI’s partners to join a global network of slum dweller organizations in their long-term struggle to combat poverty and exclusion in cities. In a development sector dominated by consultants and specialists, SDI adds value as a unique organization channeling resources directly to the poor for the development and implementation of their own strategies for change. This arrangement represents an understanding by SDI’s partners that systemic change won’t be projectized or fall neatly into a funding cycle, but requires long-term multi-pronged collaboration to continuously garrison the gains and push the boundaries.

On both fronts SDI made substantial inroads during the 2013-2017 period. Download the full publication here.

Amui Dzor Solar Project in Ashaiman, Ghana

Organize

As of 2017, the Ghana Federation of the Urban Poor (GHAFUP) has organized 338 groups in 25 cities and towns. A few years ago in Ashaiman, Greater Accra, the federation and its partners constructed a low cost housing project for 36 families, incorporating commercial facilities and public space. The development is called the Amui Dzor Housing Project and it is managed by a community cooperative. This year, the community began to organize its members and consider how they might capitalize on the Energy Commission of Ghana’s subsidy programme for rooftop solar PV. This aims to promote renewable energy use for households but is framed as being only accessible to detached houses rather than multi-family dwellings such as Amui Dzor. The priority for the organizing was to establish whether a solar project could reduce the utility bills of Amui Dzor residents and provide a reliable source of electricity to homes and businesses.

Collaborate

With support from the federation support NGO People’s Dialogue and SDI, the federation began engagement with the Energy Commission to request a partnership for the solar electrification of Amui Dzor and demonstrate Ghana’s first multi-family housing facility to make use of a net metering and smart metering system. The community argued that the project would serve as a precedent-setting project for affordable low impact housing. The Energy Commission signed on with enthusiasm as did the Ashaiman Municipal Council, both agencies providing significant support to the project. The ground was set for project design and implementation.

Thrive

The final project design not only reduces the energy tariffs of the cooperative, but increases their resilience to electricity tariff increases and outages. Although this project involves a building retrofit, the intention is for it to set a precedent for solar integration into all future low-income housing developments. The Amui Dzor project complements the Ghana Alliance’s efforts to extend access to household solar kits and lanterns. In all projects, the federation has trained members in solar system installation and maintenance.

The Ghana slum dweller federation efforts contribute to improved city resilience by increasing access to affordable and clean energy, improving skills and offering training in low income communities, and demonstrating effective mechanisms for partnership between communities and government.

The Collaborative Urban Resilience Exchange: How KYC data & partnerships support more inclusive development outcomes

Resilience building has emerged as an important priority for cities worldwide. With an increasing number of cities developing Resilience Strategies, there is a pressing need to understand how these strategies intersect with issues of exclusion and poverty. In cities with large portions of their population living in informal settlements it is critical that more attention is given to understanding these intersections. Triggered by a collaboration established under the Community of Practice for Resilience Measurement , SDI, 100 Resilient Cities and Itad have begun this work.

Given the centrality of peer-to-peer exchange in its learning approach, SDI decided to host a Collaborative Urban Resilience Exchange in its recently launched Know Your City Resource Center in Woodstock, Cape Town. As part of the exchange, which took place from July 16th-18th 2018, SDI brought together city officials and community organizations involved in resilience planning and implementation in Cape Town, Accra and Durban. The exchange supported reflection by officials and communities from the three cities about how community-collected data on informal settlements and partnerships between government and organized communities (a package of strategies known as Know Your City by SDI and its partners) can support resilient city strategies capable of generating more inclusive city development outcomes.

Learn more about the reflections and outcomes of the exchange by clicking on the image above.

Cleaner Cooking in Slums

Toxic smoke of household cooking with charcoal or paraffin kills 4.3 million people annually (more than HIV/AIDS and Malaria combined) and primarily affects women and children. In slums, the indoor air pollution risks are coupled with grave risk of fires that frequently destroy lives and livelihoods.

SDI’s people-driven clean cooking initiative improves public health in slum communities by providing valuable solutions for the poorest households – especially women and children. Click above to learn more.