HABITAT WEEK in Thailand
An invitation from Somsook Boonyabancha
During 1-7 October, in honour of the 80th birthday of His Majesty the King, and as part of the celebration of World Habitat Day, the Baan Mankong Community Upgrading Program and community networks will organise very special events all over the country by inaugurating over 80 upgrading projects together with meetings seminars by Ministers, Governors, Mayors, community networks, universities, etc., in approximately 40 provinces. These upgrading projects include all possible forms such as re-blocking, reconstruction, land-sharing, resettlement close to former communities or further away, partly urban partly rural communities, or even new community collectives formed from scattered homeless or renters identified in city-wide poverty surveys.
Here in Udonthani Somsook introduces the Mayor, academics and others involved in Udon's enthusiastic attempt to become the first city without slums in Thailand.Habitat Week in Thailand will also see very large numbers of exchange visits between communities from all over the country, as well as goups from Indonesia, Laos and Cambodia, as we use the event to mobilise communities from various places and different political cultures to see, experiences as well as learn from each other about different forms of people's housing. There will big events and smaller events. Some of the events are highlighted column right for your information.
This celebration is something to show that this kind of proactive eruption by poor people in city-wide, country wide scale to solve their housing problems is possible and quite exciting to see and be involved in.
Baan Mankong Upgrading has entered its 4th year. The process is now being implementied in 226 cities. We have approved about 495 projects covering people from 957 communities in 75 provinces. From all the projects approved it is found that about 80% have been able to stay on the same or close to former communities, 90% now have very secure land tenure and collective land lease or land ownership by cooperatives, more than 70% of these communities were previously facing eviction.
We have also received the approval of the budget for next year's upgrading of 25,000 families with government budget about 50 mill.US$. Hope to enter into a new exciting year with community people and networks become strong owners and cities as key supporters next year.
So you are welcome to join us here.
Best regards
Somsook
- 2nd October, Inauguration of 3 community housing projects in Udornthani and City Seminar to celebrate Udornthani as first city achieving cities without slums implementation which been implemented in the past three years
See Events in Udonthani Here .
- 3rd October, In a inauguration of 3 community housing projects in Chantaburi and Land Seminar where issues of Land Tenure Security will be discussed among community groups and development actors in Eastern cities region
- 4th October, Inauguration of the big Suanplu housing project in the center of Bangkok where Deputy Prime Minister and Governor of Bangkok will participate. It was the housing project built for the fire victims of the community few years ago, now it is finished. There will also 2 more communities to be inaugurated by the same Chair nearby.
- 5th October, there will be event at UNESCAP Building where 500-600 people will attend to celebrate the WHD and to grant several awards, almost a hundred to all good organizations involved in the country. ESCAP will also grant award or recognition to CODI and Treasury Department who are very cooperative in making available many government land plots for upgrading and poor people's housing in many cities in the country. After the inauguration in the afternoon, there will be inauguration of 6 community projects in Bangkok and Nonthaburi
- 6th October, morning MOU signing between community networks and 24 Districts of Bangkok to be chaired and witness by Bangkok Governor (hope to cover all the 50 disricts in Bangkok soon). In the afternoon we will inaugurate a very special project of Klong BangBua a community upgrading of canal squatter settlements.
- On 7th October we plan toinaugurate 6-10 housing projects in Bangkok and closeby cities
We will try to post news of the events as they occur .......
On October 2nd we joined the Thai Habitat week in Udonthani in the north of Thailand.
ONE DAY IN UDONTHANI
