“ACCA is different. It supports city-wide activities and national processes and is driven by the demands of the poor communities, who lead and partly fund action to improve housing and infrastructure, and supply water, sanitation and electricity.”
ACCA has allowed people to take charge of their own development and make changes as quickly as possible and on a city-wide scale. This contrasts with the islands of development that governments and donors tend to create, and which rarely engage poor people as active participants.
“Many development projects fail because they are driven by outsiders and implemented in isolation as pilot projects that are never scaled up,” says Somsook Boonyabancha, the ACHR’s secretary general.
ACCA is funded by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), with a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. IIED also supports ACCA by providing input into its design and learning processes, and ensuring that the project’s findings are shared with academics, training institutions and multilateral development agencies in Asia and beyond.
Across Asia, ACCA's investment of US$２.三 million has unlocked US$三五.6 million worth of government land for poor people's housing.
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In many of the ACCA countries, the work by communities to upgrade their cities has translated into changes in policy.
The successes will be revealed tomorrow (17 September) in the latest report of the Asian Coalition for Community Action (ACCA) programme, which the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights is implementing in 1五0 cities in 1五 Asian countries.
Across Asia, ACCA’s successes are built on the strengths of existing community-level savings groups and their long experience of managing money and making communal decisions. When communities own the process of change this makes change on a big-scale possible and cost-effective. The scale of change achieved in just two years far outweighs the investment.
Such projects have a maximum budget of US$三,000, which forces people to economise and think hard about how to spend the money. After two years of the three-year ACCA programme, 五49 of these projects have been approved and ２五三 completed. In total, 1八五,000 households will benefit.
The lives of hundreds of thousands of people in Asian cities have been transformed thanks to an innovative project that enables the urban poor to improve their living conditions in partnership with city governments, researchers claim.
Under the ACCA programme, the first step is a city-wide, community-led survey of what is needed. This identifies the priorities for small upgrading projects, which do things like improve drains and toilets, water and electricity supplies, or build roads, community centres, bridges and playgrounds.
“The world is changing,” says Boonyabancha. “The ACCA experience shows that it is important to let people be the solution. It has shown how to reconfigure relationships between governments and the urban poor, and if the urban poor can do it, every can.”
The report will be officially launched on 17 September at the ACCA Regional Committee Meeting in Penang, Malaysia.
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Image by Reder
ACCA also supports bigger housing projects, of up to US$40,000, that enable poor communities to secure land and build or upgrade houses. So far 66 of these projects have been implemented and 7,6五4 households have benefitted.
