Learning from each other 

The Philippines Homeless People's Federation creates a communication network through which ideas, information and even resources created in one community can be shared with other communities around the country. 
It's a communal knowledge pool which is open to everyone.

 

Cities in the Philippines are scattered across many islands, all having very different circumstances: different languages, different culture, different densities, different labor markets and land situations, different relationships between local development actors. 

For the Philippines Homeless People's Federation, these differences can be very useful. Although deep problems of land and housing and poverty are common to all, groups in each place have developed unique approaches to solving these problems, in response to their local realities. A big advantage of a national federation is that it links poor community organizations in many different places, so one city's breakthrough belongs to the whole federation, and one city's struggle becomes learning opportunity for groups around the country. 

The federation's chief means of linking these far-flung organizations and spreading around these lessons is community-to-community exchange. Exchanges within the federation are managed with grace and thrift by the people themselves (and without hotels, caterers or per-diems!). Visitors stay with community families, eat home-cooked meals, and move around town by jeepney and bus. 

Here's a look at what's happening in a few of the cities in the federation :

1. DAVAO

Organizing a city-wide federation with a kick-start from broadcasting

The Hupong-Kabus People's Network in Davao began savings only a year ago, but is already 133 savings groups strong, with over a thousand members and collective savings of close to 582,000 Pesos. The network's leader Willie Labawan is a radio broadcaster. He learned about the scavengers in Payatas who had organized themselves into savings groups to buy land and build their own houses, and used his daily call-in radio program to pass on these ideas and to open up discussion about problems of poverty and housing in Davao. About 30% of Davao's population lives in insecure and under-serviced slums along the city's roadsides, railway tracks, canals and coastline.

The immediate outpouring of interest Willie encountered led to meetings and to the formation of the network of poor communities. Besides managing daily saving and loan activities (most deposits are collected at night, when their earnings are still in their pockets!), the network has begun housing saving and searching for land to buy for making new communities. Three properties have been identified for a first phase housing project, which will provide homes for 130 families, and purchase negotiations have recently been completed.

2. ILOILO

Land acquisition savvy and some very busy bicycles

The Kabalaka Homeowners Association in Iloilo was one of the first regional off-shoots of the urban poor savings schemes started in Payatas and is now one of the strongest branches of the national federation. The Kabalaka Homeowners Association brings together people from squatter settlements spread across Barangays Calaparan and St. Nino Norte in the ocean-side city of Iloilo, with a membership close to 4,000 and combined daily and housing savings which have crossed the 4 million Peso mark.

 

Besides their energetic land acquisition projects, the association in Iloilo has developed a reputation in the federation for its unorthodox means of making daily savings convenient. In some areas, a guy named Haji collects daily savings deposits from very long lines of beach-front squatter settlements on his bicycle, with as many as 27,000 Pesos worth of deposits going into his waist-pouch and on to the area resource center! But land acquisition continues to be the main focus in Iloilo, and the association works very closely with the National Housing Authority to identify open land and develop it for housing under the NHA's "L-Tap" (Land Tenurial Assistance Program).

3. MUNTINLUPA 

Finding people's solutions to the problem of railway settlements

Over 200,000 families live in long-established settlements along the railway tracks passing through three municipalities in southern Metro Manila. Many work as laborers, vendors or scavengers in the factories and markets in this industrial part of the city. These communities have many problems (like the danger for children living so close to the tracks) but are close to jobs, schools and markets, and people have made big investments in improving the environment. The Philippines National Railways has announced plans to expand the tracks, and given eviction notices to all houses within 15 meters on each side of the tracks. For those affected by the project, options are limited: market rates for land nearby start at 4,500 Pesos / sm. and so far no offer of government-assisted relocation.

Savings schemes in railway settlements in Sukat and Muntinlupa began after some community leaders here participated in the federation's first national assembly in 1998, and now have 3,650 savings members in 32 groups, with over 300,000 Pesos saved. Some groups have now begun to save for housing, to search for alternative land and to to develop their own community resettlement ideas to present to the state.

 

 

 

4. CEBU / MANDAUE

Community solutions to infrastructure problems in poor settlements

Most of the sprawling and crowded squatter settlements in Mandaue are located on low-lying bits of land, squeezed between subdivisions and factories in the city's highly-polluted industrial area. The thriving federation in Mandaue has six large savings schemes, each with its own area resource center, and has set up the San Roque Parish Multipurpose Cooperative, which provides a legal umbrella for a number of community-managed development projects, including land acquisition, income generation projects, savings and credit, setting up community provisions stores and canteens, building common toilets and constructing access roads into some of the settlements.

In most of these settlements, basic services are almost non-existent. Water, especially, is a huge problem. Metro Cebu has plenty of water sources, but distribution is bad, pilferage means low pressure and contaminated water, and artesian wells soon go saline in these low-lying areas close to the sea. In Mandaue's slums, upwards of 500 families share a single water tap and people have to wait up in queues all night for a single bucket of water. One of the San Roque cooperative's most urgent projects has been installing and managing community water taps, using the Metro Cebu Water District's Community Faucet Program, which gives poor communities permission to tap into the mains and take free water, as long as they lay the pipes, install the taps and pay for it themselves. Groups borrow money from the savings schemes to buy the pipes and materials, and undertake the delicate task of negotiating with sometimes hostile factory-owners and subdivision developers for permission to cross under private property with the water pipes. Some groups use a pay-and-use system for managing the community faucets, in which people pay 1 peso per bucket, and the profits go into a special community fund for income generation activities and welfare.

 

Moving forward after the garbage dump tragedy . . .

On the morning of July 10, 2000, after a night of heavy rain, part of the garbage dump collapsed, burying hundreds of scavengers who were living and working near the dump. Despite rescue efforts, the death toll eventually climbed to 250. For a short while, the tragedy put Payatas in the center of a storm of sympathy, assistance and media attention. But when the storm withdrew, the community was hit with the news that the dump was to be closed down (and the community's economic lifeblood cut off) and 2,000 families were to be evicted from their homes in the "danger zone" encircling the dump. This intrepid community, however, lost no time in taking steps to help those whose lives had been turned upside-down :

* Set up 12 feeding centers where 3,000 children get free meals each day.

* Worked with survivors of trash-slide victims to get member savings to next of kin.

* Supported the 64 families in evacuation centers with food, cooking fuel and loans.

* Immediately set up savings groups among families evicted from the "danger zone" and relocated to the government's resettlement colony at Kasiglahan.

* Opened up a dialogue about long-term solutions to the Payatas tragedy with the local and national government, and presented the federation's ideas in a 9-house model house exhibition in August at Payatas.

5. PAYATAS :

Communities of poor scavengers create holistic and comprehensive community development ideas to improve their lives and environments

Payatas is Manila's largest and most densely-packed squatter settlement, covering some three thousand hectares of land in the northwest part of the city. In the 1970s, Marcos used the area as a relocation site for people evicted from squatter settlements in other parts of the city and when he was deposed in 1986, the settlement swelled with new squatters. The mountainous garbage dump at the center of Payatas is something of a dark angel in the settlement. The disease, pollution and physical danger that the dump brings make Payatas one of the most hazardous places in Manila to live. But for the 30,000 women, men and children who survive by gathering, sorting and selling its recyclable waste, the dump is an economic blessing. In 1993, these families organized themselves into the Payatas Scavenger's Association, and with support from the Vincentian Missionaries Social Development Foundation, have worked on many fronts to create collective, holistic solutions to problems they face, and to build better lives, jobs and communities that are secure, safe and healthy.

- Savings and Credit : Members of Lupang Pangako Urban Poor Association run a thriving daily saving program with over 7,000 members, who have taken and paid back over 62 million Pesos in loans from their own savings for emergencies, daily needs and for income generation.

- Land and housing : Tenure security and decent houses are top items on the scavengers' list of needs and the key to their genuine development. Preparations for meeting this goal include searching for affordable land nearby, designing inexpensive house designs, maintaining special housing savings accounts, and negotiating with government and finance institutions.

- Upgrading Recycling activities : The association explores ways of upgrading and expanding the sorting, processing and recycling activities in order to boost incomes, eliminate middlemen and keep more of the profits for the scavengers, who are vital parts of the city's solid waste management systems.

- Helping their own more vulnerable members : In several off-shoot programs of the Savings Federation and Scavengers Association, community people in Payatas are finding their own ways of looking after the needs of their most vulnerable members - working kids :

* The Scavenger Kids Center, located beside the dump, is run cooperatively by the mothers, has no fixed agenda, offers working children a place to play, get first-aid, sleep, shower after scavenging on the dump or get something to eat.

* Special scavenger kid's savings scheme for this free-wheeling group of children who are on their own, independent of families.

* Day-care center which mothers who work on the garbage dump built with their collective savings and run themselves, without subsidy, taking turns teaching classes and feeding the children a simple, nutritious meal, which they cook in the courtyard outside.