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ACHR
The Asian Coalition for Housing Rights
is a regional network of grassroots community organizations, NGO's and professionals actively involved with urban poor development processes in Asian
cities.
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A 50 page report on ACCA's first 2 years of citywide upgrading for Asia's urban poor communities is now available for download.
DOWNLAOD DIRECT.
PDF 50 pages text and photos 5.2 mgbs
SECOND YEARLY REPORT OF THE ASIAN COALITION FOR COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAM |
A city-wide slum upgrading movement by the poor takes off in Asia
Published and Uploaded September 2011
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NEW ACHR DVD 
9 countries - 17 films
Community Activities in Asia
Some New Links
The discussions held at the Community Architects Meeting in Chiang Mai - June 2010 - are available for download Here.
Community Architects Activities List 2009 -2010
New BLOG of day to day expeiences of ACHR supported Community Architects in Fiji
6 minute video of floods in Ladakh from Andre's friend Thinlay
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STRATEGIES
THAT WORK
Community
Savings
by Diana Mitlin
Savings and Credit
by Celine D'Cruz
Building Tools for Communities
from Face to Face Exchanges
Community Funds
32 page ACHR Newsletter
Thai Urban Poor Networks
by Somsook Boonyabancha
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POETRY and DEVELOPMENT
Arif Hasan HERE
DEVELOPMENT REFORM
JUNE 2010 Somsook appointed to Thailand's National Reform Committee set up after Thailand's political turmoil of the past months. Moving from a political crisis to an attempt at national reform in Thailand More here
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The Asian Coalition for Community Action Program (ACCA) is a three-year program of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), and the program’s target is to support a process of city-wide upgrading in 150 Asian cities. Community people are the primary doers in planning and implementing projects in which they tackle problems of land, infrastructure and housing at scale in their cities, in partnership with their local governments and other stakeholders. The ACCA Program didn’t come out of the blue, but is built on the initiatives that have already developed in most countries in the region, by community organizations and their supporting groups, and it draws on their combined experi- ences, mistakes and learning over the past 20 years. The program is an important tool for making change in situations of poverty - a tool which belongs to the urban poor and to all these active groups, helps them grow and helps them make change in their cities around Asia.
ACCA Introduction starts Here ACCA UPDATES Here 10 Key Ideas Behind ACCA Here
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New Blog Entries HERE
Tuesday Nov 15 Community Architects Network Updates
Monday Nov 14 Bang Bua Project goes to New York
Monday Nov 14 BKK Flood Update & Donations Advice
Friday Oct 28 Flood Report on Bangkok from ACHR Direct Link
Friday Oct 14 10 Key Ideas Behind ACCA
Wed Sept 28 ACCA Unlocks Govt Land for the Poor: $35 milion.
Friday Sept 10 Understanding Asian Cities: Violence in Karachi by Arif Hasan
Thursday Aug 17 The Story of the Bamboo Bridge: Pole by Pole
Plus earlier entries in the Archive
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Understanding ACHR - Read the Report on ACHR Regional Meeting
- from Jan 2011 - 130 community leaders, activists, NGO workers, government officials, architects, academics and professionals who are part of the ACHR network in Asia.
Opening remarks, Father Anzorena reflects - Panel discussion Asia Past / Future directions - Update on the ACCA Program - Country reports - Report on regional community architects / media activities - Reports from five international organizations linking with ACHR - Issue-based discussions and regional issue-based plans - Update on several other ACHR initiatives and collaborations - Activities planned within each country - Upcoming activities and documentation plans for 2011 - Some closing remarks from Diana Mitlin - Names of participants
Download here:  2 mgbs PDF text and photos
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Asian Coalition for Community Actions
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A program that is building a community upgrading process in Asian cities that is
implemented by people
based in concrete action
driven by real needs
city wide in scale
strategic in its planning
done in partnership
oriented toward structural change
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Latest Statistics on ACCA Projects as at Jan 2012
Activities approved in 153 cities / towns / districts in 19 countries
107 big housing projects approved
708 small upgrading projects approved
19 community driven disaster rehabilitation projects approved in 6 countries
ACCA UPDATES Here Year 1 Report in the Download Library HERE
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ACCA Introduction starts here
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ACCA BY COUNTRY
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ACCA SMALL POJECTS
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Year 1
Paved roads and walkways (73 projects), Drainage lines (29 projects), Bridges (8 projects), Water supply systems, wells, pumps (64 projects), Electricity systems and street lighting (10 projects), Private and communal toilets (44 projects), Community centres (21 projects), Rice banks (3 projects), Children’s library (1 project), Community fire- protection systems (2 projects), Tree-planting (7 projects), Solid waste and composting systems (18 projects).
Importantly, these small projects are all being planned and proposed by communities, through a city-wide process of prioritising and agreement, and are being implemented by community people themselves, with large numbers of both direct and indirect beneficiaries.
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MORE on the YP HOME PAGE HERE
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Regional Community Architects Meeting
Organized in Chiang Mai l - June 12-16, 2010
May very well have been the biggest-yet gathering of COMMUNITY ARCHITECTS IN ASIA.
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Kirtee Shah, described it this way
"The energy of the young, their maturity and subject strength, richness of ideas, environment of togetherness and belonging, spirit of sharing, scale (23 countries !), variety and promise - all that was stunning and inspiring to me. It is working! It made me feel young again! " |
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NEW PUBLICATION by ACHR and the Community Architects in Asia
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“After twenty years, I thought things would be getting better here. But I’m sad to see that after all that struggle and all that progress, the housing situation for the poor in Korea is getting much, much worse.”
ACHR returns to South Korea to speak with the Urban Poor and support groups.
Download the ACHR report from its visit from the |
The World Class City Concept and its Repercussions on Urban Planning for Cities in the Asia Pacific Region. From Arif Hasan HERE
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COMMUNITY UPGRADING |
DEVEOPMENT REFORM |
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A Conversation about Upgrading
An exchange between an international team of professionals who are struggling to find ways to support community-driven upgrading, and a group of community people who are actually doing it. . ACHR has prepared a 10-page illustrated report which describes the lively exchange: "You thought upgrading a slum was just a matter of paving a few lanes and laying a few drainage pipes ? THINK AGAIN!
Download from the Download Library here
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DEVELOPMENT REFORM
February 2006
Pakistan Karachi
International Loans and the Failure of Urban Development
PAKISTAN
Update on OPP- RTI
THAILAND
Ban Mankong Handbook
The Handbook details City Wide Upgrading
in
13 Cities in Thailand - Download from Here
BANGLADESH
URBAN POOR Housing By Iftekhar Ahmed May 2007
IN THE DOWNLOAD LIBRARY 2007
VIDEO UPDATE
HERE
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CITIES and DENSITY
There is a growing trend in Asian cities to demolish low income informal settlements and relocate their residents in six to eight story apartment blocks.
There is sufficient evidence to suggest that:
1. low income groups (other than white-collar workers and some of the better-off among the poor) are unhappy with the high-rise solutions for sociological reasons;
2. the units are expensive to maintain and installments for lease or ownership are more often than not unaffordable for the poor residents;
3. residents cannot carry out any informal businesses in the apartments (apart from activities such as giving tuition's or running beauty parlous); and
4. the residents become poorer and some of them destitute. As a result, the majority of them sell their “possession” informally (if they can) at throw away prices and move back as renters to informal settlements in the city centre. The city governments and their planners argue that high-rise apartment living is necessary for it provides higher densities, better social and environmental conditions and enhances the image of the city as a “world class” or “global” city
By Arif Hasan. Asiya Sadiq, Suneela Ahmed August 2009
Read more HERE or
DOWNLOAD the paper 157 KB's HERE
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Technology and the Poor HERE
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PEOPLE & DISASTERS
When DISASTERS happen, how do communities most affected by them cope? And why is it so important that space be made for these communities to be at the centre of the process of rebuilding their lives and communities ?
Special Report 24 pages of text and photos from 11 countries in Asia coping with disasters.
From ACHR's workshop at WUF Nanjing.
Download from the Download Library here
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TSUNAMI RECOVERY
Why is People Centred Recovery Important ?
Earlier
16 PAGES of TSUNAMI UPDATES
THAILAND INDONESIA SRI LANKA INDIA
For People's Centred Perspective
News
on the Tsunami in Asia please go
HERE
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Understanding Asian Cities - resource page
Somsook Boonyabancha: Unlocking People Energy
Arif Hasan: Privatising Clifton Beach - and More
Kirtee Shah: India, Architects and the poor
"If the present trend continues then the rich-poor divide, evictions, informal settlements and exclusion will increase with not only the poor but also the rich living in ghettos surrounded by armed guards and security systems (this is already happening). "
New writing from Arif Hasan
What has happened with Asia's urban poor since 1987? Introduction HERE
Download the booklet Intro to Understanding Asian Cities from here
32 pages PDF file 1.6 megabytes - with photos
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SAVINGS & CREDIT
& COMMUNITY FUNDS
A new way for development by people. A report on the international meeting held late last year in Bangkok, attending by grassroots teams and supporters from nearly 20 countries practicing savings and credit and using community funds as a the way forward for development by PEOPLE for PEOPLE.
“The world has changed and we need a new way to make more change possible - by people - and by a new system of flexible finance by people and from people. And this meeting is the biggest gathering of people who actually believe in this kind of new development. So it means something”
Somsook Boonyabancha.
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Tibet Heritage Fund - UNESCO Award HERE Congratulations to Andre and the team
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Before the ACCA upgrading program started in 2009 ACHR had many communities in Asia preparing for comprehensive upgrading through the establishment of Savings and Credit Network in many countries
Below is earlier
NEWS on Savings Networks &
Up-grading in Urban Poor Asia
THAILAND - CAMBODIA - NEPAL - LAOS - VIETNAM - PHILIPPINES - MONGOLIA - INDIA - SRI LANKA - INDONESIA - EAST TIMOR Here |
To learn more
Download 52 pages of discussions. reports and transcripts from the meeting .
2.2.MG from the Download Library here.
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This home page is being reconstructed.
Apologies for any inconvenience
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This site is
updated as often as possible. Bear with us as we become
familiar with the new technology and experiment to see what works and
does not.
Much of our material is written by friends for whom English
is a second or third language and we thank them for their efforts.
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Before
the emergence of ACHR there was no common forum or regular organising for
NGO’s, professionals and grassroots groups working in Asian cities, despite an expressed need to share experiences, tackle the large problem
of forced evictions in the regions cities, develop opportunities for
organisations of the poor and consider their place in city planning. It was with
these intentions that ACHR was formed in 1988. Since then, the links between
coalition members have matured, regional programmes have been formalised and
ACHR has become recognized as one of the most important players in urban poor
development in the region by international agencies and urban actors.
The coalition
is action-orientated, highly decentralised, and aims to provide an alternative
model of urban development based on Asian realities and experiences.
To learn more about ACHR as an organisation click the link About
ACHR.
Contact Information
ACHR coalition members are located throughout the
countries of Asia.
Contact details of our major focal points are available by clicking here .
The Secretariat of ACHR is located in Bangkok, Thailand.
Phone 662 538 0919 Fax 662 539
9950
73 Soi Sonthiwattana 4, Ladprao 110, Ladprao Rd Bangkok 10310, THAILAND
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