Slum Dwellers International Skoll Awardee Profile
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Slum Dwellers International Skoll Awardee Profile Organization Overview Key Info Social Entrepreneur Jockin Arputham Year Awarded 2014 Issue Area Addressed Economic Opportunity, Environmental Sustainability, Health Sub Issue Area Addressed Financial Services, Living Conditions, Sanitation Countries Served Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Ghana, India, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Namibia, Nepal, Nigeria, Philippines, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe Website http://www.sdinet.org/ Twitter handle sdinet Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sdinet Youtube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWep- Tdyb05KNddxUvndzfg About the Organization Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a network of community-based organizations of the urban poor in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. It was launched in 1996 when federations of the urban poor in countries such as India and South Africa agreed that a global platform could help their local initiatives develop alternatives to evictions while also influencing the global agenda for urban development. In each country where federations operate, they mobilize around core SDI practices and principles to build a voice and collective capacity in urban poor communities. This is SDI’s Know Your Community work. Organized federations throughout the SDI network profile, map, and enumerate their settlements to gather invaluable planning data and catalyze community action and partnerships. SDI’s Know Your City website combines hard data and rich stories from urban poor communities in 224 cities across the Global South. Federations use their data and collective capacity to co-produce solutions for slum upgrading. These projects make up the third category of SDI’s work—Improve Your City. Impact 14 million people currently participating in 15,716 savings groups. Number of settlements profiled is now 10,258, with 4,117 complete enumerations. Path to Scale Network Growth Residents of increasing numbers of slums organize and affiliate with the network, ultimately managing their own savings and development groups and political agendas. Social Entrepreneur Often called the “grandfather” of the global slum dwellers movement, Jockin Arputham was educated by the slums, living on the streets for much of his childhood. After working as a carpenter in Mumbai, he became involved in organizing his community. In the 1970s, founded the National Slum Dwellers Federation of India, and later, helped to found Slum Dwellers International (SDI) so that federations of slum and shack dwellers in more than 20 countries could support and learn from each other. Federations share information on how to organize; how to engage in participatory planning; how to ensure women’s involvement in community participation, savings and credit; and how to access water and sanitation. SDI works to have slums recognized as vibrant, resourceful, and dignified communities—equal partners with governments and international organizations in the creation of inclusive cities. Equilibrium Overview Current Equilibrium In the current equilibrium, over a billion people globally live in slums and urban poverty remains a significant challenge as the proportion of the world population living in cities continues to rise. Slums often lack infrastructure and services, and are unsafe and overcrowded. Slum dwellers lack access to credit, are denied legal and political rights, and are not able to maximize on collective power. Governments and corporations know very little about slum residents and don’t view them as important constituents or target market segments, further hindering the ability of the urban poor to improve their living conditions. Slum upgrading is frequently undertaken by external organizations or agencies, and focused on a narrow problem, geographic area or group of people, with little local ownership. New Equilibrium In the new equilibrium, inclusive “pro-poor” cities have the infrastructure to support current and future low-income residents and integrate the poor into cities’ economy and political structure. With poor customers formally serviced with utility services (water, sanitation, drainage, electricity) and financial services (savings federations, loans for household construction), they will experience better health, dignity in using sanitation services, and cleaner as well as safer living conditions. Instead of being invisible, or having their homes and livelihoods thought of as hotbeds of crime and disease, local savings federations will make informal settlements the engines for inclusive city development strategies. Slum communities have direct relationships with local government leaders and the social capital required to voice their interests. The definition of inclusive “pro-poor” cities is broad and multi-faceted, which will likely lead to stepwise shifts in the equilibrium over time. Innovation SDI has 5 core programs focused on empowering informal settlement dwellers and their networks to take charge and directly address urban challenges through informed city-wide dialogues to produce change. Network of local community-based organizations (“SDI federations”) across the world that prioritizes the leadership potential of women to manage savings collectives.Urban Poor Fund International, an SDI subsidiary that (through affiliated member national funds) provides capital to savings federations undertaking urban improvement and housing projects.Know Your City, a global campaign to collect and consolidate city-wide data on informal/slum settlements as the basis for inclusive development between the urban poor and local governments.Data analysis initiative, funded by the Gates Foundation, and in partnership with the Santa Fe Institute (leading scientific research institution), to normalize SDI data and make it useable for development research.Income-generating initiatives built to reduce dependency on donor finance through investing in projects that both provide a useful service and generate earned revenue (e.g. purchase of SDI office buildings, monetization of Know Your City data, travel agency that manages SDI travel, building housing developments with a cross- subsidy component where some units are sold alongside units provided for SDI members). To pursue several of these initiatives, SDI has established an independent for-profit entity. SDI’s core programmatic innovation is to deploy community approaches to urban poverty through increasing social capital and empowerment of local populations. Community-Driven Empowerment: SDI organizes slum dwellers to take control of their futures; improve their living conditions; and gain recognition as equal partners with governments and international organizations in the creation of inclusive cities.Complex Data Enumeration: SDI also differentiates itself as an expert in generating data about informal life in cities, originally intended for use by communities as the basis of negotiations with formal authorities but have now expanded to become legitimate information sources for city planning authorities and academic institutions (World Bank, Santa Fe Institute) in better understanding global urban development.Peer-to-Peer Learning: Learning Centers within country-specific federations have accelerated progress by facilitating peer-to-peer exchanges involving slum dwellers and relevant formal sector stakeholders, increasing the scope of the emerging Latin America Hub and codifying best-in-class practices in slum profiling, household enumerations, women’s savings groups, and effectuating policy change.Female Leadership: Women are recognized as the true engines of development and given leadership responsibility of building and managing savings collectives, which not only ensures efficient capital allocation to development projects but also promotes gender empowerment in a non-threatening way to men. Ambition for Change Inclusive, “pro-poor” cities where residents of informal settlements are thought of not as hotbeds of crime and disease, but as engines for development strategies. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org).