A two-day seminar was held at the Cape Technikon in December 2005. The meeting, facilitated by Gavin Andersson and his team, was attended by some representative from the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), CORC and uTshani Fund. Father Jorge Anzorena actively participated, too.

The seminar meant to:

·          Finally put the valuable experience of People’s Dialogue to rest without losing the lessons;

·          share other lessons learnt in the past 15 years in order to work on how to strengthen the commitment to building a people’s movement based on SDI principles;

·          work out some way in which the two agencies and the ally movement can interact with each other in the future, as well as with other community groups of savers and their support NGO’s;

·          rebuild a national movement of the urban (and rural) poor through an organisational formula that addresses the internal and external challenges in a more sustainable way.

1.         We started off with a very open and general overview of what (practices, structures, systems, projects or institutional activities, co-operation experiences, etc.) had been perceived as a success and what had proved failing/lacking, over the past couple of years. After some brainstorming per groups, a number of poignant points were raised.

1.1        Satisfactory achievements emerged include:

·          The establishment and functioning of savings schemes;

·          more dignity and a central role recognised for women in slums,

·          effective ritual activities such as enumerations and horizontal learning programmes (exchanges);

·          fruitful dialogue with authorities, land acquisition and housing delivery;

·          new areas of intervention such as income generating activities.

A large base was created through the interconnected elements mentioned above; this allowed growth and international grassroots solidarity, introducing uncommon kinds of professional-people partnerships. All agreed that by working with organized community groups and through effective, pragmatic rituals, the allies have been able to influence policies, change development thinking at various levels and transform many poor people’s lives. There has been increased capacity to address the needs and unite the poor across boundaries - building a genuine social movement.

CO(U)RC was established at a certain moment to accompany changes in the African environment and in the needs for development work, later giving birth to the Coalition of the Urban Poor (CUP), meant to support a wider range of organized communities (beyond the borders of the Homeless People Federation of South Africa).

Especially through the recognition of and investment in “learning centres”, there has been transfer of knowledge and skills development. CORC has been open to working with organised and committed community groups, it has allowed space for projects to grow and has been vital in the securing and facilitation of resources.

1.2        Hurdles and failures were identified as follows.

NGO’s:

Support organization’s staff sometimes showed little vision and top down approach; moreover, they happened to replicate “business as usual” while declaring to be different. There have also been poor management practices. Professionals have got too much involved in communities, failing to provide skills and creating dependency. uTshani in the past has functioned with slow processes, ineffective systems and experiences around linking internal and external resources.

FEDERATION:

Financial management problems, excessive focus on housing caused a breakdown of membership, which in turn killed savings – no original social movement spirit left, a lot of people lost faith and grew hostility. Bad attitudes and members wanting to own a process instead of just driving it, leadership climbed levels and became distant, so losing touch with people’s needs. Members unable to access loans and failure to repay loans is rife. Managing resources should be the community’s best skill to give value to and nurture, while turned out a serious deficit.

Corruption, lack of communication, ineffective decision making, lack of substantial and even formal accountability; culture of entitlement have also proved to be problematic in the past.

SAVINGS GROUPS:

·          Corruption – no structural accountability, no horizontal checks and balances, bad record keeping

·          scarce ability to respond to these problems quickly: savings scheme members did not receive capacity building (ownership, roles, responsibilities), so dependency on professionals

·          link between action and outcomes broken, especially after NGO monitoring shifted from savings themselves to delivery only

In particular, the leadership structure was a major source of problems and should now be reformed to catch up with the objectives and the very spirit of the Homeless Federation:

·          Leadership appointment process was representational but not at all democratic.

·          no effective accountability framework

·          Inability to address problems quickly

·          Power struggles amongst professionals played out by leadership

2.         On the second day, the participants in the meeting were subdivided into 4 groups, one for each of the two agencies and two comprised of community members and leaders from the FEDUP. Each group had to reflect on and answer to two very key questions (answers were not homogeneous, but all contributed to the final composition and recommendation):

1. What are the key tasks/functions that will make the federation/movement succeed? [and do we agree on a common measure for success itself?]
2. Who should perform each task and how are all actors held accountable [to the big vision & to the membership]?

2.1        FEDERATION RESPONSES

Key Tasks

·          Continuous mobilisation of communities, building savings schemes

·          Proper recording system, loan repayment and subsidy chase

·          Enumeration programmes

·          Revive community based training programmes

·          Build strategic partnership with other stakeholders; continuing lobbying, negotiating and advocacy with Government

·          Monitoring and organizing of savings schemes

·          Revive land struggle and acquisition; more commitment to housing construction

·          Improving the consideration of health issues

Who does each task?

·          Dedicated federation members: a mobilizing team should be established (linked to learning centres), to build savings schemes; loan and repayment officers to be deployed; Facilitator and treasurers responsible for monitoring savings schemes;

·          Local facilitator and treasurers administer resources with support from professionals

·          Enumeration team to manage community surveys

·          Facilitators should successful practices to manage exchanges; Mobilising team and facilitators to revive training programmes and land struggles;

·          Savings schemes to build partnerships.

All subjects should be held accountable by their savings groups, the entire Federation and dedicated professionals.

2.2        UTSHANI RESPONSE

Key Tasks (different subjects to perform these tasks, but especially uTshani should at some level cover these areas)

·          Turning finance into results to overcome historical problems

·          Assessment and application of good SDI practices

·          Monitoring of savings and credit; information gathering

·          Communication/documentation

·          Support interaction/engagement with government/institutions…

·          Identification of resources and provision of local support

·          Skills identification and strategic management of exchange programmes

·          Identifying a “face of the Federation” in the relationships with Government and others

·          Strategic thinking, planning and learning

2.3        CORC RESPONSE

Key Tasks at the local level (community leaders and members)

·          Mobilisation and expansion

·          Administration

·          Skills transfer, preparation and participation into exchanges

·          Lobbying/advocacy

·          Accountability: on delivery (houses built, loans repaid, transparent resource management)

 

Key Tasks at middle level (“enabler” / “ant” / “champion” / “ntotwane”)

·          Promotion of new saving schemes and revitalisation of existing ones

·          Capacity building – transfer skills; call on “experts” within the network to support professionally saving schemes

·          Facilitation and supporting (all tasks and processes), but not implementation of development activities (not accountable for delivery)

·          Accountability on replication of their own category (other enablers capacitated), on scale (more and more active groups started, land secured, house building projects launched); on capacity of local groups

·          Accountability to the NGO on negotiated measurable objectives

2.4        In conclusion, we all agreed that:

·          Our general objective is to improve the lives of 9 million urban poor in SA;

·          we’ll try to pursue this objective through active local groups in every slum in SA, and

·          in particular, the methodology is once more a live “federation” process (the core SDI rituals and working principles will be used as a guide in order to create and capacitate local action. These processes should be transferred to as many communities as possible);

·          there is a need for scale in terms of building and strengthening networks of the poor;

·          the challenge is to start again from promoting as many as possible active savings groups, so that as many people as possible will be reached;

·          a middle level of “enablers”/”ants” should promote and mobilise, as well as support the community groups, but should not be involved at the local level: they should facilitate the process, help to make it thrive but not do the work itself;

·          the enablers should be able to replicate themselves and multiply (at local level) with more and more people that have the same skills;

·          there should not only be enablers for Federation groups, but for all urban poor community groups – the bigger picture being Africa and reaching all African slums;

·          dedicated professionals from the support organisations need to work closely with the enablers;

·          a major challenge will remain the one of reviving and strengthening a people’s process and a voice for the urban poor, without creating a centralized structure that loses touch with the people in the slums;

·          the middle level introduced should balance the relation between community leaders and support NGOs;

·          an instrumental objective is still to set policy changing precedents through delivery.

3.         After further discussion, in our closing session it was agreed that a Strategic Learning Group (SLG) be set up. This group will consist of representatives from each of the three actors interested. The objective of the SLG will be to create active local groups in all informal settlements within South Africa. Other NGOs and CBOs will be invited to join the SLG. After (and according to) implementation and testing, this initiative should be replicated as a whole: CORC will work with SDI affiliates to set up a matching SLG for Africa.

Further steps are:

1. The Strategic Learning Group of Promoters for Social and Economic Change in South Africa – Working Document – prepared by Joel by the beginning of January

2. SLG – Guiding Principles – to be prepared by Greg and Ted by the end of January

3. A short video on this discussion and a pamphlet to spread its conclusions – will be prepared in February by CORC

4. SLG composition and first meeting – member selection by Rose and Patrick (for FEDUP), Joel (for CORC) and Ted (for uTshani Fund). Meetings should be monthly, each time in a different settlement of South Africa, with participation of the local community (from FEDUP, CUP and possibly other groups)