face to face

Part 1

Building a pool of people's wisdom through a process of regional exchange

    Intro to Part 1         HERE 1985 - 90     1991 - 94          1996  - 1999

Chronology

1985 — 90

1985: Indian exposure trip to South India: 
First grant to take communities to other areas in India (from Selavip). Women pavement dwellers from Byculla Mahila Milan go to Kerala and Madras, where they look at building materials and “projects which don’t work for the poor.” Before this trip, local exchanges between communities within Bombay were going strong and local consolidation through local exchange had already begun. 
This first inside-India exchange is so successful that the MM / NSDF / SPARC alliance begins featuring exchanges in their process and starts including budgets for exchange in funding proposals. It helps legitimize a new activity when it is “written in” like this, to highlight the value of exchange as a training experience. 

Early 1989

Women’s Regional Savings and Credit Meeting in Bombay: 
Grassroots women leaders from 10 Asian countries and 8 Indian cities gather for a week in March, 1989, and form a grassroots women’s network. Organised by SPARC and hosted by pavement dwellers in Mahila Milan, the meeting is a first on many fronts: the first exchange of poor women involved in savings and credit, the first regional acknowledgment of savings and credit as one of the most important community mobilising tools, the first to produce a meeting report composed entirely of carefully transcribed and translated words from the women themselves. This meeting sets the pattern of what future exchanges will look like: a parallel meeting of local federations is held, Mahila Milan gets the international visitors to inaugurate housing sites at Mankhurd and Railway slums, takes them all to meet their government officials, gets them to talk to the Housing Secretary about the role of women, and does everything very frugally — everybody sleeps in a big hall together and eats meals prepared by the communities. All these are elements of exchanges which later get very defined.

First all-Thailand Slum Census 
is carried out by the Human Settlements Foundation (NGO). Though not very accurate or very participatory, this is the first attempt to take a comprehensive look at slums in 27 cities outside Bangkok, at a time when the focus is still on rural development and few initiatives in these cities deal with problems of urban poverty and housing. The survey leads to community organising work in southern Thailand, and to the first series of exchanges between community leaders in Sonkhla and Bangkok. 

Later 1989

June 1989: 

Asian People’s Dialogue on Housing and Shelter in Seoul, Korea 
brings together grassroots community leaders and NGO representatives from 11 countries. 
A first in Asia — 100 poor people from 11 countries together! 
This is one of the most important milestones of the regional exchange process and for many professionals marks a shift to supporting a learning process that really belonged to poor people themselves. Held in conjunction with a fact-finding mission focusing on evictions in Seoul for the Olympic Games, the meeting clearly shows that Asia’s poor have many concerns in common and much to learn from each other.

Years later, people still talk about the magic and solidarity at this meeting, and about the telepathic understanding among community leaders despite translation problems.

International workshop-style meetings aren’t usually designed for the poor, who can be intimidated by their atmosphere and style of debate. In Seoul, the poor are the main actors and their settlements are the main venue. Sessions take place in slums around Seoul, some facing eviction crises. People stay in slums and talk about all aspects of their lives — houses, incomes, jobs, kids, basic services — even religion! This is a new concept for a workshop and ends with the establishment of a network of Asian grassroots community collectives. A second “Dialogue” is held in Bangkok, right after the meeting in Seoul, to include the South Africans, who weren’t given Korean visas.

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights “officially” formed at the Seoul meeting, holds it’s first general meeting and resolves to support exchange of grassroots groups. 

First Regional Exchange Funding Proposal flops 
Right after Seoul, ACHR works out and sends to donors a US$200,000 proposal to support regional exchanges, but nobody will fund it. It’s hard to say whether this is because we are ineffective in communicating or because donors are afraid to invest in a new process which promises no concrete “outputs” and which their colleagues can easily label as “Developmental tourism for Asian slum dwellers.” But the plan to undertake a regional exchange process systematically is not abandoned!

1990

Vietnam Exchanges 
Begin with a workshop on participatory settlement development in Ho Chi Minh City, bringing together grassroots leaders from Vietnam, Thailand, India and Sri Lanka, and Asian professionals. 
A community-managed pilot housing project in canal side settlements is set up. This is one of the first times that local officials and professionals are invited by local community leaders (not the other way around!), and one of the first times the Asian network of professionals is on hand to assist both community leaders and authorities. Exchanges to India, Thailand and Sri Lanka follow. 

Bombay — Bogota Exchange: 
The brief exchange between Bombay and Bogota is one of the first systematic international exchange programmes after Seoul. Homeless International (HI) and SPARC design this first exchange, part f the Women's Shelter Network, which brings together Mahila Milan in India and community women through Fede Viviende in Columbia. HI is one of the few funders to risk supporting community exchange before it is fashionable or even thought legitimate. Later on HI will become a committed partner of exchange programmes between India, Thailand, South Africa and Cambodia. 

The exchange is only one trip to Bogota and one to Bombay. The two groups don't mesh and the relationship ends there, but a lot of important learning comes out of that process: that men and women both have to be involved, that support organisations have to take part in and believe in the exchange learning process, that exchange cannot be treated as a project “add-on,” that the role of interpreter is very important. When the Bogota group comes to India, the Indians take them to Madras and Bangalore, utilize their presence to negotiate. Since 1985, the MM/NSDF/SPARC alliance had already begun to do these things locally and nationally. This international exchange helps everyone look at what is needed in an international intervention.

Sri Lanka Women’s Bank is formed: 
A set of experimental women’s savings groups in areas around Sri Lanka come together to form Women’s Bank (Kantha Sahayaka Sewaya) to gain solidarity, pool savings and create a capital fund for micro enterprise loans.
From the beginning, an intense programme of exchanges between poor community women all over the country helps extend the bank, enabling women to meet, share experiences and jointly solve problems.

NEXT: 1991  to 1994  - 
The process is formalised into a DFID supported Regional Training and Advisory Programme TAP implemented by ACHR. 

THEN: 1995 to 1999
The links to and within Africa are expanded and Slum / Shack Dwellers International SDI is formed. 

 

 “Why should professionals like me have a monopoly on all this vast experience, while the poor are stuck in their settlements? 
Why shouldn’t they, with such hunger to improve their lives, also be able to travel, to see the best of Asia’s development?” 

And so begins the regional exchange experiment. 
With some very modest funds from Selavip, Fr Jorge Anzorena began  helping set up and support some exploratory grassroots exchanges.

Fr Jorge Anzorena

 

 

 ACHR Sec Gen 
Somsook Boonyabancha

Sheela Patel
SPARC India

Gamage Nandasiri 
Women's Bank
Sri Lanka