UCDO teamed up with DANCED to start  Urban Community Environment Activities, UCEA,  in 1996 with a grant of US$ 1.3 million.

The fund channels grant money to poor settlements for small improvement projects such as wells, drainage, community centres, walkways, and operates in such a way that all decisions about how the money will be used - what projects, where and how much - are made by national and local community networks.

After 2  -3 years of operation the UCEA experiment has illustrated one possible way of changing development mechanisms to bring the urban poor into the process of urban development  and make the relationship between the poor and the state more equitable. 

Low Cost, Community Managed Projects

The costs of the UCEA projects are small, with an average project cost of 90,000 Baht (US$ 2,250). When the local networks make decisions about how to divide up their portion of the fund and when communities plan and propose their own projects, they are learning to negotiate, to compromise, to work within a larger whole. They're dipping down into the deep well of their own resourcefulness for building ideas, cost-cutting tricks, solutions nobody has even dreamed of yet.

And because they are working with resources that are within their control, and to which they have contributed, the projects are theirs, and they are in strong position to negotiate with city officials. Many communities have used the money to leverage more funds for their plans from the city. The programme also brings the networks together with other urban actors from the municipality and NGOs, and helps to build relationships that will mean more resources for community-managed improvements in the long term.

The UCEA fund helps pay for innovative, low-cost solutions which improve sanitary conditions, infrastructure and common facilities in poor communities. But more importantly, the programme tips the balance of power a little, and helps change the systems which determine how communities are improved. 

Environmental Improvements and Tenure

When poor people live in settlements with uncertain tenure, clean community facilities and healthy surroundings may be high priorities. 
But people are understandably reluctant to take on the financial burdens of improving a community in which they have no equity. 
But when communities do upgrade their own settlements, in their own ways and with their own hands, their projects become a vivid, palpable expression of their right to be there, a consolidator of their housing rights.

Urban Community Environment Activities

Construction and improvement of community public utilities such as water supply, electricity, drains and walkways.

Construction and repair of public places such as the community halls, public toilets and community information boards.

Waste disposal: waste recycling, preparing waste dump sites and campaigns for keeping the community clean.

Water treatment and manholes.

Improvement of the physical surrounding of the community, such as, cleaning community ditches and canals, planting trees, construction of playgrounds and health parks.

Building up more knowledge and skills on environmental development in the community through organised training, seminars, workshops, exchange programmes and campaigns

100% Fat-Free Development Assistance

The DANCED fund is managed in such a way that every penny goes directly into community improvement projects and into the network-building process.  None melts away in professional salaries, airfares, office overheads and expensive consultancies of conventional development projects of similar scale. The DANCED programme's extremely modest administration (only 4 Thai staff) piggy backs onto the UCDO, which is itself self-supporting. 

Over 196 environmental projects, affecting 40,588 families, are underway around Thailand

Project criteria stipulates that at least 20% of the project’s cost must be contributed by the communities, either in cash, labour or kind. 

Different community networks around Thailand have found different ways for deciding how their DANCED grants will be used. The Chiang Mai Community Network, for example, requires that projects cost less than 200,000 Baht (US$5,000), be built entirely with contributed labour, and benefit everyone in the community. 
Here is what a few of the communities in Chiang Mai have done with grants from the DANCED Programme.

 

"The experience with UCEA shows that if the community process is organised properly, cost effective projects will be developed efficiently and quickly, and they will provide a tremendous boost to community organisation."

Somsook Boonyabancha IIED Journal April 1999

BOARDWALK AT  TUNG  PATTANA

Tung Pattana is a small squatter settlement, with 30 houses built on stilts, on public land along a drainage canal. The families settled there after being evicted from private land nearby. Even though the possibility of eviction still looms, Tung Pattana is filled with evidence of the human impulse to make a home. Balconies are hung with orchids, spirit houses and songbirds in cages, and the merry confusion of clothes hung out to dry.

But the most potent expression of this impulse is the boardwalk Tung Pattana’s people have come together to build. During the rains, when floodwaters fill the canal, houses can only be reached by wading through the water or hopping along bamboo poles strung between houses. The community asked for 100,000 Baht (US$2,500) from the Environment Fund, and, with their own sweat and ingenuity, built a boardwalk which is a marvel. Reinforced concrete fence-posts, which come with pre-drilled holes, made strong, water-proof legs for the boardwalk. During the dry season, when the water was low, they concreted these posts in the bottom of the canal, in pairs, at two-metre intervals. Then they bolted wooden cross-members to the columns, nailed teakwood boards to these and trimmed the edges. The boardwalk is assembled in easily-liftable sections, so the entire system can be taken apart and re-bolted at a higher level during flooding, or carried away to a new place in the event of an eviction. (All this without a peep from any engineer or architect!)

 

DEEP   WELL   AT   CENTRAL

The poor hill-tribes families who settled on this land, owned by the Central Department Store, had no water supply, toilets, electricity or drainage. 
The 7-metre deep well and water filtering system they constructed, with a small DANCED grant, sits in it’s own beautiful wooden shelter, and has made an enormous difference in their lives.

 

SALA   AT   TON KAAM

The old Ton Kaam community at the centre of Chiang Mai had no temple, no meeting hall. The 2-story community centre (sala) they planned and built is now the proud centerpiece of the community. 
It cost about 250,000 Baht (US$6,000) of which 190,000 was a grant from DANCED. 
The people contributed cash and all the unskilled labour. It took about three months from start to finish.