The SDI Stockholm Sessions
Next week, SDI will travel to Stockholm, Sweden for a week of seminars, workshops, and partnership meetings with key urban decision makers from across the urban development sector. This week of events, which we are calling The SDI Stockholm Sessions, will promote a broader understanding of urban poverty and informality, specifically focusing on why these issues are in fact global concerns that affect urban residents the world over, including in European / Nordic cities, and how joint actions from different sectors can ensure a more inclusive and resilient urban future for us all. The week will be co-hosted by one of SDI’s longest standing donor partners, Swedish Sida, and we will make use of this opportunity to reflect on and share experiences from Sweden’s decades-long partnership with SDI, and to communicate these to the Swedish public and policy-makers.
To reach these objectives, SDI will launch our Urban Poverty Fighter campaign with a widespread campaign in Stockholm’s metro and on the city’s streets. This will be combined with a series of events, workshops, and seminars, including three Breakfast Seminars to which all are invited.
- Monday 21 May: SDI – the grassroots organisation that is setting the agenda for leading the urban poor out of poverty.
- Listen to Noble Peace Prize nominee Jockin Arputham, the slum dweller who co-founded SDI, talk about SDI’s journey from a local Indian organisation to a global agenda setter. This seminar will give an introduction to how the SDI network operates in the slums of 32 countries across the Global South and showcase the outcomes of SDI’s work to date.
- Tuesday 22 May: On the frontlines of creating truly inclusive cities – What can Sweden learn from the Global South?
- Addressing exclusion in cities is a global challenge and key to achieving the sustainable development goals. Welcome to a breakfast seminar discussing SDI’s experiences of co-production, collaboration, informality and building trust between communities and local government. In this seminar, co-hosted with SKL International, we present stories from informal settlement communities and share our learnings – all in the name of creating more inclusive, resilient and sustainable cities.
- Wednesday 23 May: Optimising the value of urban investments
- In the Global South, there is an acute finance gap when it comes to inclusive urban development. This seminar explores how this gap can be bridged by leveraging community, public, and private sector resources to ensure inclusive city developments. The seminar is co-hosted by Human Cities Coalition (HCC), a coalition committed to pioneering viable, large-scale business models for urban infrastructure development.
More information about these seminars is available here. They will happen at the same time and place each morning: from 08:00 – 09:30 at Myntkabinettet, Slottsbacken 6, Stockholm. Please RSVP to rsvp@sdinet.org if you would like to attend!
In addition to these meetings, the SDI delegation will take the opportunity to introduce SDI to potential new financing partners, while strengthening existing institutional partnerships. This will be done through our annual SDI Partner Joint Consultation and the annual meeting of SDI’s advisory group, the Board of Governors. The delegation will also participate in two community dialogue workshops with Changers Hub in Botkyrka, a suburb of Stockholm, and with Yalla Trappan in Malmö, sharing and showcasing practical experiences managing informality and improving integration in the city.
We look forward to sharing this watershed event with you! Please follow SDI on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for updates throughout the week.
