Some
New Directions
Over
the past decade, ACHR’s work has been primarily focused on the objective of
strengthening urban poor communities and their development partners’
capacities to improve their lives. This has been done through a number of
mechanisms, including integrative training, pier exchanges and community
networking.
It is now felt that while more communities need to be involved in
this process, many communities are now empowered with the organization, networks
and skills to become change agents in their settlements and in their cities.
There is a need for communities to be given more tools and opportunity to link
into a structural mechanism to become part of the change process within their
cities.
Hence, over the next decade, ACHR will increasingly seek to develop processes
through which its partners, members and supported communities can leverage their
experiences to play a larger role in shaping city planning, development and
policies through the constructive engagement of other civil society actors,
developers and state institutions.
New
Directions: ACHR Meeting Bangkok September 1999
S. Boonyabancha - Thailand
Arif Hasan - Pakistan
Francesco Fernandes- Philippines
Prafulla Pradahan - Nepal
Maurice Leonhardt - Thailand
Kirtee Shah - India
Mike Slingsby - Cambodia
Eldridge Jerry - South Africa
Prof Ha - Korea
Ted Anana - Philippines
M. Hosaka - Japan
KA Jayaratne - Sri Lanka
Peter Swan - Asia
Fr Norberto Carcella - Philippines |
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To Achieve this:
A
number of ACHR supported programmes will be realigned and/or
augmented. In particular,
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A
key new programme will be added to the ACHR agenda with the view of
providing urban poor communities the opportunity to undertake improvements
in their settlements. The Community Environmental Development Fund , will
attempt to create a process by which communities can undertake improvements
in their settlements whereby they demonstrate through their involvement that
alternative development approaches are viable, better and lower cost than
traditional city approaches. It
will seek through the availability of an autonomous development fund
to develop a bottom up planning process through which communities can engage
local officials in leading change processes with support and collaboration
of other urban actors in their cities.
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New
components will be added to the Eviction Watch programme, to examine the
structural causes of eviction and resettlement and to explore concrete
solutions. These activities
will be provide the means for ACHR groups to establish a dialogue with key
city actors, including external development agencies, to begin advocating
for improvements in city planning and development processes.
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In
the information and communications activities under TAP, one focus will be
to exploring the role of urban resource centre’s (URC’s) as information
centres through which critical city information is made available to urban
poor groups and other actors. And
ACHR will continue to devote energy and resources to the development of
appropriate documentation (video, audio and translated print) in order to
make its training and documentation as widely accessible to the regions
urban poor.
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Within
the Advocacy programme, under the ACHR Secretariat, closer examination will
be given to means for enhancing ACHR’s role in engaging national, regional
and international agencies to advocate for change in conventional approaches
to city planning and development and related policies.
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ACHR has found it more
meaningful to integrate gender issues and concerns into each and every
component of the ACHR programmes rather than having a separate programme for
women in particular. All
programmes will therefore specifically devote attention to grassroots women
and women’s roles in development.
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