Federation of the Urban Poor

For almost twenty years, the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP) has pioneered a collaborative solution that can transform our cities: empowering poor people to help themselves, teach themselves, and develop themselves. FEDUP has empowered hundreds of communities to start savings schemes, develop their own knowledge and capacities, build houses, and acquire land.

Founded as the South African Homeless People’s Federation after shack dwelling communities here interacted with slum dwellers from India, FEDUP has worked with the South African government since the dawn of democracy to find constructive, constituency-driven, solutions to the problems of the poor. Community mobilization and empowerment has always been based around women-led saving schemes within settlements that consolidated communities around their own capabilities and resources. Together with its partners in India, FEDUP has been the driving force behind the internationally-recognized global alliance of more than 30 country-level federations, Shack Dwellers International.

FEDUP’s tools for mobilizing poor communities

Mobilization and capacitation of community organizations around their own resources andknowledge is FEDUP’s approach for securing delivery and deepening democracy. This is in contrast to the traditional process of mobilization against external threats. The Federation model says to communities that if they save small amounts of money, gather information and then use these accumulated assets to negotiate with government they will not only have a better chance of securing entitlements, but will also capacitate and strengthen themselves. Furthermore, they will earn the full rights of citizenship, including the right to participate actively, contribute and own the developmental outcomes that they themselves have identified.

Resources

Savings and development are integrally linked in the following ways:

1. Saving brings communities together. Savings activities start long before any physical development. By saving together, families learn to trust one another. This trust provides the basis for effective collective action. The interaction through daily savings ensures that members are in touch with one another, understanding each other’s needs and support each other through the problems in their lives, whatever these problems.

2. Saving and loans enable communities to meet their overall individual and collective needs for finance. Savings become a permanent social and economic organizational mechanism in communities. Savings scheme activities continue after a specific individual or collective need is met.

3. Saving and loans provide a practical educationin household and community finance. Communities learn financial management skills and individual families better understand how they can reduce their vulnerability and increase their development options through savings. Members begin to take emergency loans and small loans for income generation; in so doing they learn how to plan for repayments and how to manage debt.

4. Saving provides the deposits needed for uTshani loans. Alongside regular saving, members preparing for land acquisition, house building and infrastructure development start saving to provide security for an uTshani loan. These deposits help to provide a basic insurance fund for those who die during their loan leaving their dependants with no family support.

5. Saving provides the loan capital for income-generation loans needed to ensure integrated neighbourhoods. Savings scheme loan funds provide the capital needed to establish small enterprises thereby supporting income generation and strengthening the local economy.

6. Loan funds provide a basis for FEDUP to manage subsidy funds. uTshani Fund is a conduit for state subsidy funds. Monies are released directly to local savings schemes for project planning, house construction and other development needs.

7. Savings breed trust between poor communities, professionals, local and state authorities, and even private institutions.The solidarity, capacity and trust built through savings and loans at settlement level are clearly the great replicators. They also create the basis for an attendant willingness to share and to spread risk. These may be regarded as the two critical ingredients necessary for the innovations needed to take pro-poor development to scale.

Knowledge

FEDUP has a long experience in the development of self-enumeration surveys. These surveys collect data all the way down to the household level. Such a level of detail is available only because individual community members always participate in the enumeration of their own settlement in three basic steps.

1. Armed with questionnaires, chalk, booklets and tape measures, enumerators create a qualitative and quantitative map of their settlement. Their work is twofold: (a) to survey each household, and (b) to number and measure every structure. This information-gathering underpins the development of a physical and narrative picture of community-level challenges.

2. A subsequent verification process within the community enables areas of disagreement to be identified and mediated by community members. Detailed documentation (graphs, charts and narratives) is prepared by the support organization and given to the community, city officials and other stakeholders.

3. Development of the settlement can then proceed, with all stakeholders engaged around a set of information that most accurately represents the community’s developmental needs. Moreover, the community is mobilized itself around its own knowledge of these priorities.

FEDUP accomplishments

Community mobilization

Savings schemes are mechanisms that are placed at the disposal of all settlement inhabitants in communities where the FEDUP is active. FEDUP savings schemes have a wide footprint in all 9 provinces of South Africa. Moreover, FEDUP has encouraged and supported savings groups in Angola, Brazil, Ghana, Kenya, Madagascar, Malawi, Namibia, Uganda, Swaziland, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Housing and Land Tenure

FEDUP has established itself as an international pioneer in the field of tenure security and people’s housing since 1991. uTshani and the Federation have always been committed to engagement and negotiation, recognising that the urban poor have much more to gain from dialogue than confrontation with a legitimate, pro-poor Government. Between 1994 and 2001, uTshani and the Federation have assisted locally-empowered communities mobilized through savings to achieve the following. These accomplishments came through working with the government based on the formal understanding that state subsidies would be disbursed directly to community organizations. uTshani provided pre-finance and capacity building funds to communities practicing the basic FEDUP rituals, manifested in demonstrated savings track records:

Houses Constructed (56 sq metre average size)                          11,093 houses

Land secured for greenfields (relocations)                                    19,893 families

Services installed (water, drainage) in informal areas                   425 plots

Community centres                                                                        11

Clinics                                                                                             3

These assets had the following market values:

Houses                                      R700 million

Land                                          R 80 million

Services                                    overhauled when subsidies were provided

Community Centres                  R9 million

Clinics                                       R2 million

TOTAL                                      R791 million

This represents more than a fifty-twofold increase in the value of the Fund.

— Since uTshani is a not-for-profit organisation, these increments have accrued to individual households of the urban poor, or to the residents associations that represent their interests.

— The fund created a network of community organisations that were organised around their own resources and capacities, and were committed to partnering Government, not simply waiting for handouts.

— Many of the projects were developed on land that was closer to the inner city, since upgrading always took precedence over relocation, and when relocation was unavoidable alternatives were regularly negotiated.

— Community participation through collective action has meant a pride in the houses and the neighbourhoods. This is shown most clearly by the fact that an estimated 90% of the original households still live in uTshani-funded houses.