Category: Zimbabwe

KYC Zimbabwe, ready to create and make an impact!

Seventeen Know Your City (KYC) TV Zimbabwe crew from Harare, Masvingo, Kadoma and Kariba gathered in Harare in July for a week long training workshop. The focus was on video production and social media management, both theory and practical. Some of the KYC TV crew participated in the filming of a video about the Gungano Urban Poor Fund, ahead of the formal workshop.

Africa is the world’s youngest and fastest urbanising continent, but the stories of young people in informal settlements are often overlooked in traditional media. In response, Slum Dwellers International (SDI) launched KYC TV, a creative collective made up of youth from across the SDI Network using photography, video and storytelling to mobilise young people to make change at a settlement, city and global level.

In the group, the youth displayed a wide range of skills from rapping, writing, filmmaking to music production. Some participants were more experienced looking to brush up on their skills, while others were new to the KYC TV collective. Rejoice Maridza, from the Golden Vision Savings Group in Masvingo, loves writing. Rejoice initiated this article for the SDI Stories of Change Blog and interviewed participants about their reactions to the workshop.

The crew received a warm welcome at the Crowborough Resource Centre from local savings group members designated to support and host City-to-City exchanges in Zimbabwe. Funded by the Gungano Urban Poor Fund and built by the local Federation, the Centre serves as a climate action hub and learning space. It also features a vegetable garden managed by SDI Climate Champions. The SDI Zimbabwe Alliance is a partnership between the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation, the Zimbabwe Young People’s Federation and the NGO, Dialogue on Shelter for the Homeless Trust (DOS).

Dialogue on Shelter’s KYC Youth Coordinator, Teurai Anna Nyamangara, coordinated the programme supported by Youth & Media Coordinator James Taylor and Advocacy and Communications Officer Esley Philander from the SDI Secretariat. Kudakwashe Nyasha Matsangaise, videographer and editor for KYC TV Zimbabwe, was “encouraged by the unified technical and theoretical foundation now established within the team. I am optimistic for the future of KYC TV Zimbabwe.”

Hannah Ndoro a KYC TV member from Bulawayo says she was excited to “create, develop and make an impact. We must use every opportunity that has been awarded to us as a stepping stone for telling rich hard data stories as Know Your City TV!”

Learning from Federation Leaders

Through SDI’s pioneering practices such as slum profiling, mapping and community led data collection to ensure that every informal settlement is mapped, made visible and support advocacy efforts for settlement upgrading. During the week, the KYC TV Zimbabwe crew also had the opportunity to meet with leaders of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and members of local savings groups in the Tafara settlement. Federation members shared their experiences leading community-driven slum upgrading projects, securing land tenure, improving access to essential services and the importance of savings groups and revolving funds.

Stellamaris Maradzamunda, a producer with KYC TV and member of the Crowborough Youth Savings Group, shared, “Savings is not something you can ignore. These groups change lives by fighting poverty and helping people in vulnerable communities secure land and build climate-resilient homes.” Philda Shekete, from KYC TV in Harare, added, “Through collaboration, young women can be empowered to collect data that helps advocate for real solutions to the challenges we face in informal settlements.”

Glenview Area 8 Market

The team also visited Glenview Area 8, Zimbabwe’s largest informal furniture market, to document the stories of SDI members who earn their living there.

Stella says that, “through the data collection and needs assessment done by the Federation, we saw that there was a need for proper toilets, especially for women. There was borehole but it was failing to meet the demand. Now, we have managed to build toilets and install two more boreholes through the support from ACRC so that there is water, especially since sometimes there are fire outbreaks at the market.”

Dezzel Chris Chinyama from Kariba said he appreciated learning about video production and podcast creation. He adds that this will not only help his federation, but he is looking into content creation for possible income generating opportunities.

Tendai Paradza from Kadoma says that, “I learnt that social media is a double edged sword, and how to verify data and beware of scammers online!”

Closing Ceremony, Opening Possibilities

At the closing ceremony, each participant received a Certificate of Participation. While the Certificates were being handed out, KYC TV crew shared out loud each individual’s contribution and talents displayed during the workshop.

Patience Mudimu, the Executive Director as well as George Masimba, Head of Programmes of the Dialogue on Shelter Trust attended the ceremony. Patience encouraged the KYC TV Zimbabwe collective that “there is no story that is too small. But now you can capture it in a much more professional manner. That is what we are expecting and hoping out of this training,”

She added, “Who else can you teach? Because you now teachers as well, you have skills you can pass on to other young people.”

WATCH KYC TV | The Gungano Urban Poor Fund

The Gungano Urban Poor Fund began with community members contributing just $1 USD per month. Since inception, the Fund has secured land for informal settlement residents valued at an estimated $84 million USD, an extraordinary achievement under difficult conditions.

The Fund was launched in 1998 in Harare in Zimbabwe, by the then Minister of Local Government. These collective savings are used as leverage to negotiate resources and partnerships with donors, city authorities, and other key stakeholders. Over the years, the Fund has weathered significant macroeconomic volatility, including currency fluctuations and record-breaking hyperinflation.

Besides providing access to land, the Fund also supports community-led financing for essential infrastructure such as housing, water, sanitation, and roads. It further provides seed capital for small business and remains responsive to the evolving needs of savings groups and the day-to-day realities faced by communities.

The fund has been decentralised to the regional level, bringing governance closer to community members to independently decide priorities and strategies for growing the fund. There is an urgent need for stronger partnerships with both state and non-state actors to ensure sustained financing and support.

Thank you to the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) team for their support in producing this video.

🎥 Watch the recent Know Your City (KYC) TV short feature to learn more about the inspiring impact of the Gungano Urban Poor Fund:

🔗 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21t1GCT4EY

📚 To learn more, please see Chapter 8 titled, ‘Urban Poor Fund and Revolving Fund: Finance by and for the people in Namibia and Zimbabwe’ in the ‘Learning from informality publication’

🔗 https://city-transitions.global/wp-content/uploads/GIZ-Good-Practice-Collection-Learning-from-Informality.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K21t1GCT4EY

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.

What women want – part two: to map vulnerability to climate change

This article was originally published by IIED. 

By Sheela Patel, founder director of SPARC India and co-founder of SDI

This blog draws mostly on the experiences of SDI’s federations, (usually) formed by women’s savings groups. For members of these groups and their federations, exchange visits within their city or between cities – and internationally – have long been a key part of learning. This would include visits to cities where groups were mapping and collecting data on risk and vulnerability.

But when pandemic-related travel bans made in-person visits no longer possible, women learnt how to have digital conversations over the internet.

Five priority areas emerged. The four described in part one of this blog were: a roof over their heads; greens in their meals; women taking care of their own health; and ‘wheels and wages’, or the difficulties navigating increasingly unaffordabe transport options.

This blog discusses the fifth request from women – to be able to use their own knowledge and skills to map vulnerability to climate change.

***

Mapping benefits for everyone

Mapping and profiling informal settlements brings great benefits by guiding and informing responses to climate change risks. But just as importantly it benefits city government – if they support, engage and work with these women and their federations, both in mapping and data collection, and in developing responses. It also allows women to devise and agree their own strategies for change.

Examples of community-led mapping and profiling informal settlements include:

• Across Kenya, within a 20-year history of the Kenyan federation of slum dwellers (Muungano wa Wanavijiji)
• In Cuttack (India), mapping flood risks at city level
• In Kisumu (Kenya), enumerating and mapping all informal settlements, and
• In Epworth (Zimbabwe) using a geographic information system (GIS) for informal settlement upgrading.

Engaging the people who know best

Slum mapping and profiling is not easy. Residents often distrust the reasons given for collecting data, and the people who collect them. But this can be overcome by engaging residents from the start, including in the data collection.

SDI’s Know Your City campaign has engaged and supported slum profiling in thousands of informal settlements in 450 cities. The information gathered is added to SDI’s database.

In the last two years of working on climate change issues, SDI has tried to understand what brought women to the city, the challenges they face and where they live. An underlying driver of women moving to cities is their vulnerability to climate change, and being unable to find work in rural areas because of climate change’s negative impacts on agriculture and on rural populations.

In urban areas, the location where women squat is usually on land that was not in use because it was either next to a river or a dumping ground, or in some other way not suitable for habitation. Riverside settlements risked flooding while high-density informal settlements lacking public space created urban heat islands.

Now we must unpack the challenges that women face, understand how these are linked to climate vulnerability and build capacity, so women can deal with these challenges themselves. And we must address the ‘leaking bucket syndrome’ of constantly existing in survival mode to address these ever-present challenges.

So when women heard about the Race to Resilience campaign, it was something they understood very well. If they were supported to come up with robust solutions, it could help save their city, their families, and their communities.

It would also limit the depletion of valuable resources destroyed by disasters. It would improve their ability to climb out of the difficult conditions in which they were living, towards a better quality of life.

Communication is key

Women also realised that most city governments and communities were not in regular touch with each other. When disaster struck, there was no mutual, trusting relationship between them and the city, and urgent issues were not addressed.

But having a detailed vulnerability map of informal settlements is an effective way of grabbing the attention of local government. With a map, training communities and city officials, it was possible to develop a plan together to address different problems.

This would prove invaluable when identifying measures for disaster prevention and preparedness. Women immediately saw the benefits and are keen to explore this with other groups and federations across their networks.

Knowledge is power

The SDI network starts by exploring what women themselves can do. What are the simple questions they can ask themselves and each other to build up responses to help define the challenges and develop action plans. This revealed practices they are already doing, but which may have some frailties, and identified the actions they could do for themselves.

In the second phase, SDI approaches external partners for technical and financial support. Each federation presents their plan to their city government representatives to explore whether they can partner with them in the process.

But the most exciting aspect of these processes is that if communities outside SDI actively engage with these campaigns, they open up ways for grassroots advocacy to inform resilience.

Listening to those who are excluded and vulnerable, and trusting in their ability to define what they need, leads to solutions that are built around them. The outcome is new ways to engage a range of actors and stakeholders who can contribute to solutions that become the new normal.

My two blogs reflect on what women want, and we invite social movements, other networks and people who design solutions in health, housing, habitat, and data management, to join us.

Together we can develop capacities and skills to engage community networks to define areas of investigation. Solutions that deliver the needs and priorities of poor communities, neighbourhoods and especially for women – as identified by them – are possible.

Zimbabwe’s Urban Resilience Programme

Project Background

Dialogue on Shelter, the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation (ZHPF) and the Zimbabwe Young People’s Federation ZYPF) are part of a consortium of non-governmental organisations implementing the Urban Social Assistance Programme in 3 Zimbabwean cities: Harare South, Epworth and Bulawayo. The Urban Social Assistance Programme has two complementary focus areas, namely the cash transfer (CBT) component and the urban resilience (UR) component. Since November 2019, the Zimbabwe SDI alliance has been implementing preliminary activities in order to roll out the urban resilience work with collectives in the targeted domains. The preliminary activities have centered on mobilizing and organising grassroots savings collectives which will spearhead vital community-led urban resilience interventions that are needed alongside cash transfers to improve food security.

What is urban resilience for the Zimbabwe SDI alliance?

Inadequate sources of income may lead to urban food insecurity, but urban poverty cannot easily be addressed by raising income levels. Limited access to safe and secure housing and services directly contributes to malnutrition and food insecurity. Meanwhile, poor tenure can further impair access to basic services and decent housing. The residents of low income and informal settlements are often overlooked by government. These communities often rely on collective organisation and brokered co-production partnerships to secure political visibility and voice to negotiate longer term structural solutions to their problems, for example, the regularisation of their informal neighbourhoods and/or access to affordable services. As a result of inadequate access to services and low incomes, those living in low-income neighbourhoods suffer from increased exposure and sensitivity to the environmental risks including those related to climate change. All these factors affect the ability to build resilience to a range of shocks and stresses. Effective practical responses and strategic policies are needed to address urban food insecurity in both its income and non-income dimensions. the Zimbabwe SDI alliance’s response to these challenges is to promote incremental and participatory slum/informal settlement upgrading through the following activities:

• Building women-centred savings collectives
• Community-led data collection processes
• Emphasising participatory informal settlement upgrading
• Promoting horizontal learning processes for capacity-building
• Co-production of knowledge for policy-influencing and advocacy
• Establishing co-created/co-governed settlement/city level urban poor funds
• Promoting community-led livelihoods interventions

Complementing cash transfers with community action in urban areas

Whether in rural or urban areas, the focus of social protection efforts by both international and national organisations has been primarily on cash transfers to individual households. Where targeting has been used, there have been concerns that this selectivity reduces solidarity between households in any given neighbourhood and therefore leads to less collective action, whether to do with political pressure or to provide essential goods, rights and entitlements and/or to provide basic services through self-help. Hence, there is a tension between collective action and individual support. While this is not an exclusively urban problem, this tension is exacerbated in urban informal settlements because of the need to negotiate with the state for regularisation and improved access to services. 

More generally it is recognised that there is also a need to build collective social and political capital in order to enhance the resilience of communities in the long run. It is clear that no one financing mechanism can deliver resilient communities. Different social protection and finance mechanisms will continue to serve different purposes. Local savings collectives often provide a space for low income urban communities to save and borrow money, the revolving nature of these funds means that resources can go further. More effective approaches to poverty reduction including food security can be developed by converging and harmonising institutions (local gov, civil society, private sector and humanitarian agencies) to ensure coherent planning and to develop local alliances to enhance local resilience and well as improved development options

Layering urban resilience and cash-based transfer interventions

Under the urban resilience component, the Zimbabwe SDI alliance is implementing a set of activities which are aimed to building resilience amongst the targeted domains. Below, a summary of the activities is provided;

• Establishment and strengthening of savings collectives – this activity entails the setting up of community-level institutional structures for facilitating savings and loan activities for supporting livelihoods and building resilience. The collectives are constituted on average by 20 households per group with members meeting regularly to save and discuss priorities for the membership. The savings and loan groups will, therefore, be geared towards building a pool of financial resources through which the groups will then, in turn, give out loans to members to meet household requirements such procuring food, meeting medical expenses and school fees. The savings collectives are also meant to contribute towards building the much-needed social cohesion for groups to better engage decision-makers regarding accessing improved urban services.
• Community networking and exchanges – under this activity, the targeted communities undertake peer-to-peer exchange visits. The exchange visits include on average 5 people from a selected settlement visiting another settlement. The horizontal exchanges seek to provide learning opportunities for communities with similar conditions of vulnerability enabling them to learn how their counterparts are dealing with similar urban shocks. The exchanges, therefore, act as a capacity building and strengthening tool through sharing of experiences around, for instance, resilience-building activities implemented in other geographical parts of the project.
• Participatory data collection processes – these constituted participatory data collection processes meant to generate information on socio-economic and spatial attributes of the targeted settlements. In particular, the assessments are meant to document urban shocks and community responses. For instance, the recent outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has resulted in the need to understand its impacts as an urban shock. The findings from these participatory assessments were in the form of impacts, community responses and settlement development priorities that will help inform and sharpen the resilience building activities. It is also expected that the findings will help in defining a clear agenda on existing infrastructure needs during the engagement processes between the communities and decision-makers thereby enabling the access to improved urban services.

Urban resilience interventions should build on the on-going CBT activities in the targeted domains. Directly layering the urban resilience activities onto the same household that receive CBT proves to be challenging, given the different targeting methodologies associated with urban resilience and CBT activities. For instance, participation in savings collectives is voluntary under the urban resilience pillar, it is not a guarantee that everyone on CBT will join the savings collectives, and there may be some members who have not received CBT but are willing to join the savings collectives under urban resilience. However, given the settlement-wide focus of collective urban resilience interventions, the urban resilience activities have indirectly benefited households that have not been the subject of CBT interventions.

How the Youth are Leading the Way in Tackling COVID-19

This article was originally published by ICCCAD. Click here for the original post.

In Hatcliffe extension, an informal settlement located in the northern part of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe, a group of young people are leading the fight against the pandemic. They are  building awareness, adapting their businesses to promote hygiene and encouraging fellow young people to contribute to community well-being. Artwell Nyirenda reports.

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Hatcliffe extension was once a holding camp for urban migrants coming from different parts of Harare. Young people between the age of 15 and 30 constitute a higher percentage of the community’s population. Social and economic challenges are prevalent in the area, as the young often get involved  in illegal activities for survival. The majority of Hatcliffe’s residents work in construction and informal trading, and few are formally employed.

Continuous expansion of the area has further exacerbated the challenges in accessing services, particularly water and sanitation. Communal boreholes are the only source of water, as tap water is not available. The community is struggling to meet the growing demand for water with a limited number of boreholes, many of which are dysfunctional, resulting in long queues for water collection.

News of the COVID-19 pandemic and its consequent safety protocols has added to the community’s existing fragilities. Waiting in a queue to collect water at communal boreholes is a daily reality for the residents of the Hatcliffe extension – increasing the risk of virus transmission. Until now, no positive cases have been found in the area. However, soon after hearing about COVID-19, everyone has been terrified to risk their lives while scrambling for scarce water. With the onset of the lockdown, naturally the demand for water has significantly increased and large crowds have gathered near the boreholes.

In Hatcliffe extension, the youth have always been at the forefront when it came to crisis management. Lonica Kenneth is a young female resident in the area, and a member of the Zimbabwe Young Peoples’ Federation (ZYPF), and its sub-group, Metro Focus Detergents Filming Group. ZYPF mobilises young people to influence positive change in their communities through documenting and sharing their lived experiences with relevant local authorities and other stakeholders.

The Metro Focus Detergents Filming Group is under the Safe and Inclusive Cities project, a youth-led project funded by Plan International, and consists of 20 members, including Lonica. Saving is encouraged within the group, and the members have been practising saving 10 bond notes (approximately USD 0.10) per week. They also make and sell liquid soaps, detergents, liquid gas and different arts and crafts. “The Safe and Inclusive Cities project has been an eye opener, as I have been made aware of opportunities to generate income, and participate in my community. I have realised I can make detergents that will help my family and community,” shares Lonica.

With her own savings, Lonica began a detergent business in June 2019, producing and distributing liquid soap within her community. However, the lockdown has caused her business to suffer and Lonica has had to redesign her production strategy. “My business has declined since the lockdown as I was unable to purchase raw materials for production. But I also realised that there is a growing demand for soaps and sanitisers during this pandemic, and I really wanted to help my community members during this crucial time” says Lonica.

Along with the other members, Lonica identified an opportunity to boost their businesses and support their community during the crisis. She approached Safe and Inclusive Cities to finance her business. “Thanks to their support, I was able to produce sufficient liquid soaps. They helped me to buy the raw materials required for production,” Lonica adds. With increased sales, she is now saving 20 bond notes per week. Because of the high levels of poverty in her community, she sold the products at a very low price so that people can afford them. “We are also distributing hand washing buckets, sanitisers and soaps to community members who are most impacted,” Lonica further points out.

In addition to their businesses, Lonica and her group has also been involved in raising awareness of COVID-19 preventative measures . “My group has managed to distribute hand washing soaps near community boreholes to promote hygiene. We also influenced community leaders to regularly disinfect and monitor the water points to ensure safety. These public spaces have improved. Chaos is avoided as people adhere to protocols set by the leadership” she argues. The community youth members have also asked relevant government ministries for further training so they can disseminate information more accurately.

Hatcliffe extension residents are  fully cooperating in monitoring the water points and advocating for increased youth engagement. “First thing in the morning before anyone comes, I set out the drum, and the bucket with water and soap. Everyone must wash their hands before using the borehole handle. I also use sanitiser to disinfect the borehole handle, to ensure it is clean for everyone to use,” says Steven Nyamapfeka, a local leader in Hatcliffe.

“We are requesting outreach programmes on COVID-19 issues, as we don’t have enough information. If the virus spreads in this community, we will struggle to survive because we are not practising social distancing. More youth can be engaged to disseminate vital information,” shares Phillip Matamande, a member of the community. Residents have highlighted the need for masks and other protective gear, and the implementation of social distancing. They have also requested the Ministry of Health to increase the supply of chlorinated water.

Despite numerous hurdles, Lonica is hopeful that if the youth continue to work together, they will be able to overcome the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 crisis. “I am happy that I am able to play a role during this difficult time, and inspire young girls to lead initiatives for the betterment of our community. Together we can tackle the COVID-19 pandemic!” says Lonika.

Interviewers’ perspective

As we are witnessing during COVID-19, young people from around the world are being innovative and leading initiatives within their communities to tackle the global crisis. Lonica, and others like her, are taking steps to support their communities through active participation. They have been influencing and communicating with leaders in understanding the dynamics of their communities. It is important that the youth realise their potential and the crucial roles they can play within their communities and lead the way for a better, brighter future.

About the interviewer

Artwell Nyirenda is a program officer at Dialogue on Shelter for the Homeless People in Zimbabwe. He is working with young people in slum settlements in documenting the daily experiences in their communities for advocacy purposes.

About the interviewees

Lonica Kenneth lives in Hatcliffe extension and actively participates in community development platforms and programs. Through her work, she has inspired many young people who have joined her in transforming their communities.

Steven Nyamapfeka, is a local elderly man living in the Hatcliff extension for several years. He is also the Secretary of the Water Committee of Hatcliff.

Phillip Matamande is a local community leader and vice chairperson of the Water Committee of Hatcliffe.

Zimbabwe Federation Response to Covid-19

On behalf of the the The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and Dialogue on Shelter Trust, SDI presents the work to fight COVID-19 in Zimbabwe. The following is an account from the SDI affiliate in Zimbabwe. 

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Zimbabwe recored its first Covid 19 case on the 20th of March 2020. On the 23rd of March the nation recorded its first C19 death of a well know public personality. This jolted skeptics to the reality of C19, a few weeks after a Government Minister had dismissed C19 as a disease of the West that does not affect Africans. On the 30th of March the government announced the beginning of the first lockdown phase. The lockdown has been extended into phase 2, which allowed businesses to open. Intercity travel is prohibited. Unfortunately, the relaxation of lockdown rules has resulted in an increase in confirmed cases. As at May 31st 2020, Zimbabwe had 178 confirmed cases, 29 recoveries and 4 deaths out of a total of 45,395 people tested. The confirmed cases are mainly returnees in Government Quarantine centres. These centres have become a hotspot of COVID-19 infections. This has led to the stigmatization of returnees. Most agencies have been urging government to accelerate its testing.

Impact of COVID-19 in Zimbabwe slums

The Covid19 pandemic has presented complex health and humanitarian crises to the Zimbabwean society which was already burdened with a crippled health service, economic and financial crisis as well as unemployment and food shortages. Other governments responded to the pandemic with lockdowns in the interest of flattening the curve. While these measures are commendable, they have been viewed with much skepticism in terms of how they have been roundly applied to contexts in the Global South without regard to the different realities such as widespread poverty and inequalities. Conditions of urban informality rife in the Zimbabwe, for instance, beg for customised and measured responses. Social distancing, in particular, may not neatly work with overcrowding in slums. Informal business closures also suffocate the very lifeline for most slum/urban dwellers who sustain livelihoods on daily incomes. The high incidence of informality in the Global South also means that there is potentially high risk of  exclusion of slums and informal businesses in both public and private sector-driven responses to the Covid-19 crisis.

The Zimbabwean government has responded to the C19 reality by demolishing all informal trading spaces in all areas of the city including residential areas. The C19 is being used as an excuse of demolishing informal markets and homes under the disguise of sanitising and decongesting the city. Unfortunately, this has increased the number of homeless people and overcrowding as families take in evictees. In addition, the markets for basics such as fruit and vegetables are now centralised. The markets now open for a short time forcing people to converge and crowd the market for the short hours they are open. The markets are a potential hotspot for C19.

On top of this, the loss of employment due to C19 has resulted in families loosing income and failing to pay rent. Evictions of non-paying lodgers are imminent..

Crowded and poorer settlements, where it is difficult for people to safeguard themselves against getting infected, are likely to see worse outcomes. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a disruptive new normal for everyone through its social distancing guidelines. But for the urban poor households, these guidelines aren’t just burdensome but they are essentially impossible. Social distancing is a critically important response to the pandemic, but it also assumes that people have adequate space, services and social safety nets to survive such an order. This is simply not the reality across slum settlements in urban areas.

Against this background, the Zimbabwean SDI Alliance received resources towards the following Covid related strategic priorities and activities:

1.  Contain the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and decrease morbidity and mortality.

Knowledge is power. The Alliance came up with awareness packs that they circulated through social media. Hardcopy fliers are discouraged and social media is the communication of choice available to people in informal settlements.  Support was given for communication and leaders are reaching savers through social media

Over the years the Alliance has invested in settlement profiles, enumerations as well as spatial maps of slum settlements. These were used to assess the degree of deprivations in the informal settlements. Information was shared through the government-chaired Emergency Strategic Group that the Alliance is part of. Informal and slum communities such as Mucheke in Masvingo and Tafara in Harare are benefiting from increased water supply through rehabilitation of a borehole funded by SDl and in Masvingo projects funded by the Bilbao.

2.  Decrease the deterioration of human assets and rights, social cohesion and livelihoods

When the first case of Covid was confirmed The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation stopped all federation meetings, even before the government announced a lockdown. However, the Alliance became concerned that the social cohesion of groups would be compromised by not meeting. To continue communication with groups, leaders set up social media platforms. The platforms are being used to communicate with savers. Some groups have now started saving. Some are saving using mobile money, others are meeting in small groups to save, respecting self-distancing as required by our lockdown rules. Some groups are splitting up so that they have smaller groups as well as meeting for not more than an hour. Some groups have revived community gardens to augment food sources. The next steps are to continue to check the status of all savings groups as well as to develop guidelines for saving and maintaining group cohesion when living and working with Covid. With the funding from SDI, the Management Committee allocated resources to all the 12 federation regions. Allocation was on the basis of the number of active savers in the region. The regions were divided into 3 categories from the biggest region to the smallest in terms of membership. Each region decided on its priorities. The funds were used to support the following activities:

• Purchasing of non-food items such as soap, sanitiesrs and masks. It is mandatory to wear masks in Zimbabwe. Reports of families sharing masks were common
• Purchase of food items, especially grains. Mealie meal is a staple in Zimbabwe and unfortunately is scarce at the moment. In addition, some groups bought matches and cooking oil for their families.
• Rehabilitation of a borehole in Tafara settlement in Harare.

A total of 3702 households were direct beneficiaries of the funding.

3.  Protect, assist and advocate for communities particularly vulnerable to the pandemic.

The government embarked on a program to demolish informal markets as well as some settlements when they announced the lockdown. The demolitions are being regarded as preparedness plans to sanitize informal settlements to minimize the spread of C19 in informal settlements. Authorities in the past had failed to demolish these markets and settlements because of legal challenges to the evictions as well as political resistance. However, C19 has given authorities an excuse to undertake unchallenged evictions. The Alliance has engaged Legal Resources Foundation to assist in preparing a class action to fight the evictions. To this end, the Alliance has prepared a Standard Operating Procedures to guide the Dialogue on Shelter Trust staff how to support Federation activities during C19. In addition, the Alliance prepared a policy brief to be used with government and other stakeholders in planning and implementing interventions and advocacy activities related to C19 in informal settlements.

Challenges

Groups have closed bank accounts because of expensive bank charges. It took long to send money safely through Mukuru to different regions.  The tariffs of 7% of transaction value was also expensive.

Some groups failed to purchase their priority items due to scarcity.

Some groups failed to produce their own loans due to lack of transport to cities where the ingredients are sourced.

Only a quarter of the membership directly benefitted from the funding and small portions.

Way forward

Initially the alliance was waiting to resume activities after Covid. What is apparent now is that the Alliance has to devise ways of working and living with Covid and are therefore planning to:

• Carry out a national survey of all groups to find out how groups can adapt and resume all their activities with necessary modifications
• Support all groups to save
• Explore rebuilding of livelihood activities under Covid
• Scale up the production of soaps and masks
• Continue to link savers and communities to national C19 programmes

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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.

Transforming Bulawayo from the Bottom Up

SDI co-founder Joel Bolnick has spent the past few months living out of a suitcase as he travels overland to spend time with SDI-affiliated urban poor federations across Southern Africa. During his recent time in Zimbabwe, Joel shared reflections on the Bulawayo chapter of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation, noting that the Bulawayo federation’s achievements point to a recurring theme that is perhaps under-recognised across the SDI network.

The Zimbabwe SDI Alliance, comprised of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and their support NGO Dialogue on Shelter, is one of the oldest and most mature affiliates in the SDI network. Indeed, Dialogue on Shelter has never wavered in its commitment to building an independent, bottom-up urban poor movement and supporting it with a light touch. But Dialogue’s offices are in Harare, over 400 kilometres from Bulawayo, and staff often ask themselves if perhaps the effectiveness of the Bulawayo federation should be attributed – at least in some part – to the lack of intervention from the power centre of both the NGO and Federation in Harare. Indeed, their achievements are notable. Click here to learn more.

New Beginnings for Stoneridge Evictees in Harare

Organize

In January 2016 over 3,000 Arlington families were evicted by the Central Government and re-settled in Stoneridge without proper shelter or basic services. The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and its support NGO Dialogue on Shelter commenced an emergency shelter project in December 2016 aimed at providing emergency transitional housing to 231 of the most needy families. While the project was catalyzed as an emergency response, the federation will ensure efforts are focused on long term tenure security, shelter, and services for the community. The community has organized themselves into 14 savings schemes and community teams were organized including technical, security, and savings. Twenty community members were trained to erect structures on bricks to increase lifespan the of the structure. Flooring was constructed from a layer of 100-250 bricks contributed by the household.

Collaborate

The Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation and the City of Harare worked in close partnership on the project. The District Assistant’s office played a key role in all community activities, such as beneficiary identification and selection and distribution of wooden cabins to the beneficiaries. A technical team of 24 members including local authority officials (the District Administrator and the Councillor of Stoneridge, two staff from Dialogue On Shelter, three members of the Zimbabwe Homeless People’s Federation, and fourteen Stoneridge residents was established to manage the project and agree on project beneficiaries.

Thrive

The families now living in new homes in Stoneridge are negotiating with government to ensure their tenure is now secure. They are living in safe housing and have been able to reunite with children sent to live with other relatives following the eviction. With brick floors and raised foundations, the families say they are better able to withstand periods of heavy rain than they were in their previous location. Using their savings, the families have begun to make improvement to their basic homes and have even started growing small vegetable gardens. Community exchange programs are underway to support the community to identify the most effective sanitation solution for their settlement. In particular, Stoneridge families now interact with other federation communities such as Dzivarasekwa Extension and Gunhill. These communities have secured tenure and collaborated with the city authorities to improve services.

The Zimbabwe slum dweller federation efforts contribute to improved city resilience by reducing human vulnerability, improving access to safe and affordable housing, building skills and offering training among the urban poor, and the building of cohesive communities.