It is always rather simple to start a community network, with a little understanding about urban poverty and its direction of development by people themselves. A gathering of urban poor groups to talk about common issues and common action almost always leads to some form of collaboration and networking, and almost always leads to further meetings, gathering and eventually to some communal action. 
Most networks start out being very loose in the beginning. Having regular gatherings, people from different communities and different parts of the country learn to understand each other’s situation and problems, as well as each other’s character before getting into some forms of organization. The form these organizations take usually only emerges out of more concrete interactions, in the process of making decisions or implementing common activities together.

Therefore, it is possible to encourage network formation by trying to set the conditions of communal decision-making and communal project implementation.

Since 1996, UCDO has collaborated with DANCED to develop Urban Community Environment Activities (UCEA), using the programme’s Environment Fund to allow community networks to make decisions and to implement community environmental improvement projects in a given constituency, with advice from other local actors. The conditions of the program have brought together community groups to work as stronger community network in making decisions, and in promoting, implementing and managing all the development activities involved in any community project of the network. Therefore, each community which is linked to the network has direct access to the wealth of knowledge and experiences from several other community groups and has the chance to benefit from their development activities at the same time. In this way, all work and all successful processes in any particular community becomes learning source for the whole network. Also, when problems emerge, the network can become a joint mechanism to deal with problem of the members as well.

3.2    Diverse Types of Urban Poor Community Networks

There are different types of community networking. The basic idea behind a network should be how to create linkages in ways that the urban poor communities control as much as possible. The idea of community networking is not a new one, but the forms of community networks which are clearly controlled and clearly understood by the communities themselves are not too common. Most conventional community networks are led by outsiders, as part of a strategic process that is organized and controlled by government organizations or other outside organizations, for poor people.

Because of this history of outside control, it is important that community networks be organized from the bottom-up - from the smallest constituency and acting as the base to link with larger constituencies. In Thailand, community networks begin by linking among communities in the same district or the same city, as a basic network formation, then link together at provincial, regional and national levels. There are also community networks which link with each other around the same common development issues, such as networks of communities located on State Railway land, communities along canals, or communities linked by shared enterprises or welfare activities. Each type of community network provides a common platform for communities with common backgrounds or interests to work together to attain their continuous development objectives as well as to negotiate together, as a group, for related structural or policy change.

3.3       Integrated Development Functions of Community Networks to address urban poverty

Once communities organize themselves into community networks, a larger community development mechanism begins to emerge to deal with their development in a much deeper and much larger scale, gradually linking to the causes of various poverty problems. Some examples from the process in Thailand are summarized here :

3.3.1   Community network to address land and housing problems

Most urban poor groups have serious land and housing problems. Insecurity of land tenure and eviction problems prevent the urban poor from accessing their basic rights and in settling their lives in the city properly. Behind this situation, there are large, structural problems of land distribution and income disparity which are part of the present economic system. These structural problems are too great, too difficult and too expensive for any single urban poor person or even for any single poor community to resolve alone. This is the structural point where a community network can play an important role in resolving problems too big for individuals.

In Thailand, several types of community networks are dealing in several different, interesting ways with problems of land and housing development. Some of these networks are working to address these problems in the following ways :

3.3.2 Community Network to develop quality Savings and Credit Activities as well as a community Joint Development Fund

Community savings and credit activities comprise an important basic development mechanism and become a community’s financial resource base for self-managed poverty development by community people. If savings and credit activities can be developed and linked with external process properly, they become a link to other resources and a builder of community capacity to strengthen and increase income earning and create better job opportunities. It can also help urban poor groups improve their financial status and back them up in negotiations with market organizations to increase earning capacity. In Thailand, there have been some interesting developments within community networks around these aspects :

3.3.3 Community Network to develop Community Enterprise Activities

One of the main reasons why people are poor in the first place is because they are entrepreneurially scattered and isolated, not organized in such a way as to compete with the larger and more influential private enterprise sector, and so continue to earn very little. In the communities, where the poor have many different kinds of jobs, it is not easy to organize people with similar job together. This is an area where a community network can be very effective, and the experience in Thailand illustrates several interesting ways in which community networks can help develop community enterprises :

3.3.4    Development of a Community Welfare System by Community Networks

The development of a community safety net to deal with the very poor and disadvantaged groups within urban poor communities, as well as the development of a basic welfare system for urban poor groups are very crucial. During 1999, UCDO has coordinated with the Social Investment Fund to develop a community welfare system using the community network as the central organization among member communities. The process began with network meetings in which each community identified their own particular welfare problems and described the needs of their own community’s disadvantaged groups. Then each community conducted its own survey to assist in concrete planning of welfare activities based on present realities. After that, there was meeting to talk about the concrete types of welfare activities could be undertaken - How to do it? How to work? Who to work with? How to coordinate? How to budget? How to organize into several kinds of welfare funds? What should be relationship between the network and community and target group? As a result of this process, most urban poor community networks in Thailand have now organized their own welfare funds to support some of the following welfare activities :

3.3.5     Development of Urban Community Environment Activities by Community Network and Local Partnership Committees

Since 1996, UCDO has coordinated with DANCED to organize Urban Community Environment Fund for urban community environment projects organized by community organizations and community networks. The program has been deliberately designed in such a way as allows community groups to be the main implementators, with the close support from and management by community networks. The plan now is to link the network together through a process of problem identification, decision making, cost-sharing, budget preparation, and project implementation in Local Project Committees, implementation, maintenance, management etc. As a result, about 200 projects have been implemented in the past 2 years. These environmental improvement projects, which include community centres, drainage, water supply, bridges and paved walkways, are much cheaper and much faster in the implementation than most government projects. The most important aspect of these projects is that they not only improve the environment of poor settlements, but they help strengthen the network and to build partnerships with local administrations.