* BULLETIN : 1

June 11, 2004.

Donor Meeting

SDI participated in a meeting with its key donor partners last week. The meeting was held at the Cordaid offices in the Hague. Celine and Sheela were not able to join Joel as originally planned.

In addition to Cordaid there were representatives from Misereor, IIED and Homeless International. Some of the issues that were raised warrant attention.

It was clear that the evaluation that Cordaid conducted with Sparc about two years back really rankled some of the Cordaid staff. Their approach remains at best suspicious and at worst hostile and antagonistic to Sparc. They insist that this does not have any spillover to SDI as a whole. However it is clear that until these issues are resolved it will be very difficult for allies at Cordaid to integrate the SDI process into the broader institution.

The partners who participated at the meeting are by far the largest financial contributors to the Secretariat and to many of the SDI affiliates themselves. But if partnerships involve trust more than they do money then a lot of work still needs to be done. This is to be expected. With these four agencies (and Selavip who did not participate) SDI is attempting to develop new working engagements that seek to go beyond the generally dysfunctional relationships between Northern donors and Southern NGOs and social movements.

There were two important outcomes from the meeting. First SDI will start to plan the terms of reference and will recommend who should be the participants in a pending evaluation. There was general agreement that there was a need to go beyond conventional evaluations and that a system of monitoring needs to be developed in the programme as a whole. This was referred to as a “360 degree” monitoring process, meaning that the usual power relations that characterize the monitoring of NGOs and community based organisations by donors needs to be transformed into a more holistic approach in which all aspects of the engagement are monitored.

Second it was agreed that a working group comprising representatives of the four donor agency will be established and will make efforts to meet regularly. At least one meeting every year will coincide with an SDI board meeting where time will be devoted to an interaction between the board members and this working group.

Activities Involving Some Affiliates

SPARC/MM/NSDF held a large public event together with the Mumbai Police in regard to community safety. Details will be provided soon by the Indian alliance.

CODI hosted a housing finance meeting in Thailand that was attended by several SDI affiliates – including SPARC, uTshani, UPDF Cambodia and VSMDI. Philippines. A report will be provided by Diana Mitlin of IIED who coordinated the meeting.

SUPF and UPDF held a big meeting in Cambodia. It was attended by Federation members from India, Thailand, Ghana and Kenya.

UGANDA SAVINGS GROUPS hosted teams from SA and Kenya who came to help mobilize savings and assist the 45 community members to be involved in toilet construction in Kisenyi.

MUUNGANO AND PAMOJA also hosted the SA delegation who worked with them in Kibera where the Kenyan alliance is working to develop alternatives to a pending eviction.

THE DURBAN FEDERATION in South Africa hosted a team from Muungano in Kenya, who came to help them with toilet construction in Lamontville. Two toilet blocks are currently at roof height. These toilets represent a deepening of the SA alliance’s partnership with the Ethekwini Metro. The Durban Federation has also started building 300 houses in Piesang River. This represents a resumption of house construction after a two year delay.

This is the first SDI bulletin to be produced by the SDI Secretariat. They will appear regularly in future in order to enable affiliates and other associates to keep up to date with our work. In future they will be a little more detailed but will seldom exceed two to three pages in length.

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SDI CALENDAR JUNE 13 to JUNE 30.

June 13 – 15: Coalition of the Urban Poor hold regional summit in Port Elizabeth.

June 14 - 21: SA/Zimbabwe team to go to Ghana together with colleagues from CORDAID. Some membes of the team will gather information and video footage for the anti-eviction CD Rom that we are preparing for AGFE/WUF. Others will engage community-based savings groups and city authorities.

June 15 - 19: Ethekwini Metro and Durban Federation go to India to see toilet construction programme to establish what experience can be applied to the SA context.

June 15 – 22: Ethekwini and NMM councilors and officials accompany SAHPF groups to Sao Paulo Brasil to participate in Urbis and to sign two-way people/pubic MoU.

June 21 – 26: SDI groups participate in Asian Development Bank gender conference in the Philippines. Teams will come from Sri Lanka, Nepal, India, Thailand, SA, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Kenya.

June 28 – 30: Pamoja Trust holds internal planning meeting in Nairobi.