* REPORT : 88

Exchange trip to Nairobi

REPORT OF THE PARTICIPANTS

Kampala, 10th October 2006

The Kenyan federation of slum dwellers Muungano wa Wanvijiji, and their support NGO in Kenya Pamoja Trust decided to invite a team from Uganda to come and learn from their experience in Nairobi. 

The participants were selected during the federation meeting held on Sunday 1st October 2006 in the community hall of the sanitation unit of Kisenyi III. They agreed to go ask questions and learn about the work of the federation in Kenya, and bring back knowledge, tools and ideas in Uganda that will help to strengthen the federation process there, and support community efforts towards the way forward. Julie from the support NGO in Uganda was invited to Nairobi as well so as to participate to the exchange and receive some training from Pamoja Trust.

Names of the participants

Our team departed on Tuesday 3rd October 2006 and travelled by bus to Nairobi. We met with a team of Tanzanian from Dar-es-Salam, Arusha and Dodoma who were also there on exchange to learn about the tools and methods used by the Kenyan federation of urban poor.

Day 1 – Wednesday 4th October 2006

Meeting in Pamoja Trust offices

Salma from Pamoja Trust welcomed her guests to their offices. She described how Pamoja Trust was formed as an NGO to specifically support the Kenyan federation of urban poor in their struggle to mobilise slum dwellers communities and find ways to improve their living conditions. She explained that the key role of the NGO was “to hold the federation process together”.

The story of Pamoja Trust and Muungano started with the evictions affecting  the residents of Nairobi’s informal settlements. These were either government evictions or evictions conducted by private developers who would issue a notice then pay the government for burning or destroying the houses on the land they aimed at developing for other purposes. The slum dwellers had organised themselves in an association against eviction: Muungano. They were supported by CBOs, churches and activists. Pamoja Trust was created in 1999 with the aim of supporting the slum dwellers in their fight against evictions. They received the visits of SDI delegations from other countries who shared with them their experience with eviction and taught them effective methods to lead fight against it. This is how Pamoja Trust and Muungano were introduced to the “federation rituals” of the SDI network:

Slum enumeration: to encourage poor people to collect data concerning themselves and to define their needs in terms of housing, secure tenure and services. This is the first federation ritual, it allows the people to say who they are, how many of them, what they want as a group of residents of informal settlements

Savings: to build trust among the slum dwellers and allow them to be stronger as a group. The money they collect represents an asset in their negotiation with other parties. The savings are also useful to secure land and start construction as a community.

Land identification and mapping: to identify vacant land on which people can construct for themselves the facilities they lack: sanitation units, houses, community halls..

House modelling and construction: to show to the government what is our vision for developing the land we occupy; this is how we want to distribute housing; we have decided to organise the land this way. It demonstrates how people are able to organise themselves and settle things down regarding who can benefit from what.

Exchanges: to go visit other federations of slum dwellers and learn from their experience; then go to other informal settlements which face eviction and housing problems and introduce them to our mobilisation methods.

The ultimate aim of these rituals is the strength of people’s federation, the force of their advocacy and capability when the community stands together as one.

Peter Chege from Muungano, the Kenyan federation, welcomed the guests then showed them the sketch model of the houses they are constructing in his village Kambimoto. We discussed the problems they had faced in Kenya at the beginning. Mobilising the community was not achieved in two days. It took time to sensitise the people to the tools and philosophy of the project. They also had to face a lot of opposition from the local leadership who felt threatened by the project.

He explained how important it is that people feel as a federation and act as a federation to stand as strong advocate of people’s interests in the course of urban development.

Visit of Gitathuru village in Huruma slum area

In Gitathuru village, the people are organised into active saving schemes and they have started construction of houses and a sanitation unit/community hall.

We first visited the construction workshop where people learn and produce their materials for construction. We saw women there working on the production of laddys and stairs.

We then went through the construction site where people (the savers themselves!) are working. We visited the sanitation unit/community hall (like the one in Kisenyi III) thay had already built. It is much smaller than the one in Kisenyi III because people wanted to save land for their houses. It ressembles this:
 
On the second floor, a team was auditing the savings by the pin board. So we sat down and observed their work and discussed their methods to do auditing. In this way everyone can know how much he/she has saved at the end of each month, and what is the total saving money they have on their account.

Some of the members with whom we were visited then explained to us how they organised their finances to do construction. They told us they were using a separate account a “project account” for building, because they did not want the funds used for construction to be mixed with people savings. The project account is composed of savings money as well as a loan from the federation fund AMT. The money from the project account gets progressively paid back after construction.

Visit of Kambimoto village, in Huruma

The Kambimoto village has started construction two years ago. There are already 62 houses which are finished and occupied by their owners. They are currently working on other houses. Eventually, they aim to build a total of 270 houses for members of the Kambimoto village savings scheme. People have agreed to also include a church on the land on which they are building.

The construction of 62 houses were constructed in a year and a half but just the last 28 houses only took 8 months to be built, because people have gained more and more experience with construction.

Peter Chege is the chairman of Kambimoto. He introduced us to his wife and showed us his own house which was constructed under the project. This was a nice house built on two levels with one room on each level, a small kitchen area on the ground floor and a bathroom on the second floor. Chege said he was still saving to build a third floor so his family can benefit from another room upstairs.

The house resembles this:

People in Kambimoto agreed together on a house design so that the maximum number of people can get a house. They agreed on one measurement for all the houses so that everyone gets an equal share of the project.

We also saw Kambimoto village construction workshop where women were working at producing construction materials and training other women to construction methods. Some women have been appointed to work there permanently and they are paid by the construction fund of Kambimoto community.

Network meeting in Mahila slum

Peter Chege and Michael then took us to Mahila slum nearby Kambimoto. The Mahila community has not started constructing yet but they have been saving and managing loans very actively for some years. They have already designed the modelling of their community ‘dream house’ which they wish to construct. This is a two storage house inspired from the Indian federation. They explained to us that the first stage of mobilising people in their area took some time, that their struggle had been first to get people to save daily and build trust among themselves.

We walked through the dense Mahila slum and reached the meeting place: a small open space hidden in between shacks. On the side, a group of youth is preparing doughnuts for selling. They are part of the federation youth’s programme.

Representatives of the different savings schemes of the area hold their network meeting here every Wednesday afternoon. This network meeting is meant for these groups to exchange information about what’s happening in their area, how their savings is progressing, what are the problems they face… they discuss these issues together and reflect on the ways forward. This network is also a way for the different savings schemes of the federation to support each other. If some savings scheme from a certain area is affected by eviction, it can mobilise all other savings schemes of the region within the federation network, and receive their support. For example, a woman from the Ghetto slum area explained that 5 houses in her area had been burnt down. The other saving schemes thus discussed ways to support their fellow federation members and help them reconstruct their houses with a loan from their own saving scheme.

These network meetings are another means to strengthen the federation, because people share their information, and decide where to stand as a federation. When the different saving schemes want to know how much money has been saved in the region, they call for a network meeting with all the treasurers. When they want to support a group with construction or saving methods, they call for their construction team or their saving team to come and share their experience.

The Kenyans explained to us how this exchange of information and knowledge is power for the federation.

Day 2 – Thursday 5th October 2006

Visit of Soweto slum (southern region)

The team was first introduced to the place. The location is along the railway line which connects Nairobi. People live on either side of the railway, at less than one inch of the rail tracks. When the train comes, and people remove their stalls, but the waste and the dust gets spread over people as they cook and live there anytime the train passes. They lack passage tracks from one location to another. They lack sanitation and water supply facilities. Hygiene is very critical. The sewerage is open and children are playing near. The pit latrines are not deep enough and get filled up too quickly, because the place is situated on a swamp. Houses are very squeezed onto each other and toilets are hardly distinguishable from the rest of the house. They have no garbage collection services, the government does not assist them in any way, only NGOs are active in the area.

We met with the Soweto Highlisi saving group. These people are hard working and struggling to improve their living conditions. We had noticed that within the Kenyan federation, when someone calls “Muungano” (togetherness) people answer back “Nguvu yetu” (that’s our strength). In Soweto Highlisi, they have also another saying of their own: when one calls “Pamoja” (united), people answer “ni sila ha ya maskini” (it’s the weapon of the poor).

They explained to us how they decided to come together and begin saving. They had met the government on several occasions to explain their problems and felt like the government wanted to assist them. The government encouraged them to save 5 Kenyan shillings (150 Uganda shillings) a day, which they did, and the money was taken to the city council. The city council built good houses which could have been enough to house half of the saving group. Yet they sold the house units to a private company, which charged 800 000 Ksh (20 millions Ush) for people to get a room. Those who could not afford such a buy were then advised to rent a room in instalments of 10 000 Ksh per month (250 000 Ush), which still represents more than their income. This was a way to push people away and discourage them to leave in the centre of the city. Meanwhile, people were never given back the money they had saved.

This is why they became very doubtful and angry with their government. The slum houses belong to government officials, and they get a rent out of them, this is why they don’t want them to get destroyed so that people construct better houses. So they opposed any developer to come and improve the housing situation in the slum.  We felt that people in Soweto Highlisi are very suspicious about visitors, they fear to have government agent in their area who might report back their information to the city council.

Visit of Toi market area

Toi market is the Owino of Nairobi. A group of market vendors welcomed us. They meet every Thursday afternoons to review the saving and loan collection of the week, and discuss together issues regarding the Toi market and its people.

The Toi market savings scheme has over a 1000 members who save daily. They are the market vendors. It is them who manage all issues regarding the management of the market area, the waste collection, the sanitation unit… the Toi people have different accounts to which they contribute as members:

a savings account to which they contribute their own savings daily. This is the account from which they allocate small personal loans to members.

a welfare account to which they all need to contribute a set fee per month, with instalments of their choice. The welfare account is aimed at helping those members in need when something happens (like death in the family, house burnt down..). it is separate from the savings account because it is to allocate bigger loans but to fewer cases.

an account for insurance to which all members must contribute a set fee per month. This is to pay a collective insurance for their market.

a ‘land account’: This is a fund for the community to secure land and develop it. They have already bought their land, now the fund is to help them to develop it. They have achieved the construction of a sanitation unit at their market, and the user fees generate income for the saving scheme. In Toi, people must contribute an equal fee to the community’s land account for the development of their area.

The meeting of the Toi market community was very very organised, and we were  also impressed by the large number of people attending. The chairman and the chairlady welcomed the members and the visitors and announced the meeting agenda. They call for the collectors of each zone to give report of the totals they have collected during the week. One by one, the collectors tell the total money collected for savings, loan reimbursement, land and welfare. The treasurer records the results then reads the bank slips out loud to the audience. The audit team gives a report of their activity during the week. Then, the loan committee allocates loans to members who applied for a loan the previous week and who are judged eligible for this loan by other members. They also choose the other members who are going to get a loan the following next week.

During the meeting, people also go through the several problems that they encounter with their savings, the collection etc. For example, at the meeting we attended, some of the collectors asked for a  small allowance from the community for their collecting job. Two members asked to be removed from the savings scheme for personal reason, they were handed back their savers book and the money they had saved.

Joseph Muturi is the treasurer of Toi market savings scheme. Once the meeting was over, we discussed several issues with him. He explained that the long-term goal of the project is to stop eviction and stand strong as a community in the negotiations with the government and private developers, and to improve living and working conditions of the people of Toi market area. But in the meantime, people need to make use of their savings money for small purposes. The short-term loans are meant to improve people’s daily lives, while the community is working on longer-term issues such as constructing houses and community facilities. Also, this short-term loaning system helps to build trust among the community.

He also explained how important it is that the people feel involved, that they be able to own the project and criticise things when they go wrong. He says “let everything come from the members. Members respond, criticise, make suggestions, and from there lessons are being learnt and we move forward together, as a community”.

Day 3 – Friday 6th October 2006

‘East African’ meeting in Pamoja Trust offices

We held a meeting session with the team from the Tanzanian federation, Chege and Michael from the Kenyan federation. Together, we reflected on the challenges we are facing in Uganda, in Tanzania and in Kenya. We compared the problems of leadership and discussed the ways to improve governance within the federation. We also compared our different relationships with the government in Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.

We also discussed the idea of creating an ‘East African’ network between the federations of our three countries once the federation processes in Uganda and Tanzania have gone further.

The aim of building a strong federation

The aim is to stand together as one. To speak with one voice to express the interests and priorities of the people to the local and national authorities, and other actors involved in the urban development of our city.

We want to show them that together we can find solutions to improve living conditions in our areas of residence. Solutions that are more effective, more sustainable, and more affordable, because they are owned by the people themselves.

We need rituals to keep us on tracks as a federation. It is not enough to call ourselves a federation, we need to feel as a federation and act together as a federation. Every federation member is a saver who engages him/herself actively in the project. Those who fail to save, who fail to attend meetings cannot be called federation members. The federation is the project of the people, it is the people who decide and act for their community.

As a federation member one has several responsibilities:
To save regularly, and contribute to the savings of his community
To meet and discuss with others about the savings, the interests of the community and the strategies to adopt
To engage actively in the project for his/her community
To make good use of partners: to seek for support from partner organisations, the support NGO, SDI, the local government officials, the ministries… the federation is people’s project, these partner organisations are there to assist the people in their project, but they cannot do the work of a federation for them.

Savings and collecting

Savings are the roots of the project. It what builds the strength of the community; it is what builds the trust between members; it is from there that we can start construction projects and achieve our goals.

Accountability and Transparency are the two core principles of savings. This is why savings require a strong and serious organisation. It is to the community to organise its own savings and make sure that they are transparent and accountable to its members.

Every member who joins the savings group is registered. He/She fills a form, in which he/she indicates his/her credentials as well as the next of kin, so that if anything happens to the saver, his/her savings go to the next of kin. The member then receives his/her saver’s book.

Members in Kenya save daily. Every day, collectors go from one saver to the other to collect their savings. Each time, the saver writes in his/her saver’s book the amount which he /she has given to the collector. The collector writes in the collector’s book how much was collected for this member, then goes to another saver’s house. At the end of the day, the collector brings the money to the treasurer who signs the collectors book to confirm the amount he/she has received from the collector. He then writes in the treasurer’s book the total amount collected in the day for all zones, and goes to bank the money on the savings’ schemes account.

We need about 2-3 collectors for each zone. In Kenya, the community appoints a permanent patrol for collecting with one permanent collector for each zone, responsible for the collecting of his zone and giving account of the savings collection of his zone at the savers’ meeting every week. Then every week, the community designs other volunteer members to help the permanent collectors do the week collecting. As permanent collector, one can choose anyone from the community to go and help him/her with the collecting.

Collectors are also those who can make the information flow within the community. They meet with the savers of their zone and so they inform them about the project.

Savers meetings

From our visit, we have seen that the meetings are very organised and transparent so that the information gets shared and discussed by the community. The chairman is there only to guide the meeting, he does not make decision on his own. All members have equal right to say, reject, or agree on a certain issue. The Secretary sits next to the chairman and writes the minutes of the meeting. The treasurer and the loan committee sit together next to the secretary to make share the information on the savings money publicly.

The order of meetings is effectively followed:

1. At the beginning of the meeting, the secretary reads the previous minutes of meeting and the chairman presents the agenda of the meeting.

2. Then the collectors of every zone are asked to report on what they have collected during the week. The new collectors of the week are appointed to accompany the permanent collector of each zone.

3. The treasurer then gives his report on the total money being held on the savings account by reading the bank slips out loud.

4. The loan committee reads the names of the persons who have asked for a loan and allocates the loans for the week to those who have been judged eligible to receive their loan.

5. the different teams give their report: the audit team, the construction team, the negotiation teams….

6. then the community can discuss the other issues at stake, appoint new teams, decide on a strategy to move forward on a particular issue…

What we have learnt as well is that it is important that people participate and engage themselves in the discussions during meetings. It is from the members’ responses and critics that the whole community can learn on their mistakes and move forward. Members need to own the project, because it is the people’s project, and the people’s savings.

Auditing

Auditing is part of the savings scheme activities. It helps to keep the savings transparent. It is to know how much people have saved, how many people save, how the savings are documented, how long it takes for the money to be banked…

The auditing team is composed of savers only; collectors, the treasurer and members of the loan committee are not allowed to audit. This is how they proceed:

1. Individual Saver Level
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2. Collector Level
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3. Treasurer Level
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4. Bank

1. The audit team collects the savers books and checks that dates and amount correspond with what is written in the collectors book. This is how we see if people are still saving and if they have given the amount of money they have saved to the collector. Then, the auditors write on the auditing posters the amount that each person has saved at the end of each month. People can then come and check how much they have saved for each month.

2. Then we see at collector level how much money was collected each month and at the end of each year. We compare this with what is written in the treasurer’s book.

3. At treasurer level, we see if the total amount collected each month by all collectors matches with the monthly bank slips so that we know if the money collected was banked.

4. Then we make a summary of what has been collected and banked in the parish at the end of each year and compare this with the bank statements. This is when we can see how the total savings money on the account was used. How much was added and how much was used. Then we shall ask for evidence of the money that was used to give account to the members.

Once it is audited, the information for each saver gets recorded in the ‘recording book’ held by the secretary. Each member has his/her page in the recording book so that we know what to speak when people complain or when there is a mistake.

Loans

In the long-term, the savings of the community are meant to help improve the housing conditions and the living environment for the community. But most people look at houses as a far away matter. But in the meantime, people need to make use of their savings money for small purposes. The short-term loans are meant to improve people’s daily lives, while the community is working on longer-term issues such as constructing houses and community facilities. Also, this short-term loaning system helps to build trust among the community.

This is different from the loan that the community can contract for construction or other big expenses. These are individual loans that people can contract out of their collective savings account for personal purposes (for schooling fees, health expenses, etc.).

Anybody can apply for a loan. The member who wants to contract a loan needs to fill up an application form and present it to the loan committee. The demand is made public during the savers meeting, then the loan committee examines the demand and sees if the person can receive the loan according to the criteria defined by the community.

From what we have seen in Kenya, you don’t need to have saved more money than the others to be eligible for a loan, you need to be a serious regular saver and attend meetings. The goal is to upgrade the very needy. Not only those who have more money can contract for loans, but also those who have less. It is the ability to pay back as a proof of honesty and trust that counts.

In some savings schemes, the members cannot borrow more than what they have collected as their total savings. In Toi and Soweto, borrowers start with a small loan (about 1500 Ksh = 30 000 Ush). If they see the borrower is paying back properly, they can increase the loan amount next time the member needs another loan. This is in order to build trust among their people, to make sure they are not on government’s side.

House designs

We saw from the Kenyan experience, than when people first dream of a house, they tend to dream too much: they wish for big houses with many large rooms. Some people even wished for a swimming pool and a parking.

But as they discuss their dream houses within themselves, members realise that they have to dream within constraints: the size of the land and the funds available (“the land and the pocket”). It is the community to agree on a house design that combines the needs and wishes of all. For a large housing project, the enumeration tells how many people need a house, from there they can divide the land between themselves so that everyone gets a share.

Then, once members have agreed on a house scheme, they present it to the architect of the support NGO who helps them achieve their house design. For example, the people from Kambimoto village agreed on having each a house of their own, on three levels with one room on each level, a kitchen area and a bathroom. They presented their ideas to the architect who designed the whole housing complex of Kambimoto which comprises a total of 270 houses.

Construction methods and organisation

In order to save money on construction (and thus be able to build more houses), communities in Kenya have organised to construct their houses themselves. They produce their own building materials and participate to the construction work. In this way, they get the materials very fast and the construction work is done more carefully in a way that is more accountable to the community. When construction workers are community members themselves, they will not try to cheat on the quality of the construction work.

Before starting construction, the community appoints a permanent construction team who will be in charge of managing and supervising the construction work and give account to the rest of the community during savers meeting every week.

But each member of Kambimoto has to contribute voluntarily to the construction work one day per week. At the end of their construction day they present their ‘exercise book’ to the site construction manager so that they register their day of work in the project team records. If one cannot work on his construction work day, he/she can ask another member to work for him/her and agree on a working compensation. But this is an agreement between individual members independently from the community.

In each village we have visited in Kenya where they have started construction, there is a construction workshop where members produce their own building materials. These members, usually women, have received some training and run the workshop on a full time basis. They themselves need to train other members while doing the job. They produce all the required materials for house construction: the roof laddys, stairs, cement, the windows, doors, joints etc.. the only thing that the community buys from exterior for construction is the bricks. The community has agreed on a pay for their members who work daily at the construction workshop. They are paid with the construction fund.

The houses are built before being allocated to one member of the community. So everybody contributes to the effort, and at the end the community decides who gets a house that is achieved according to different criteria (if the member is active, saves regularly, participates to the meeting and the construction work etc...).
Construction is done in a very transparent way. All the receipts and records of expenditure are kept by the treasurer and the project expenditure committee of the community. They sit together regularly to write a report of the expenditures with a cover letter to the AMT fund to give evidence of how the money has been used.

Construction finances

In Kenya, they have set up an account for construction for the whole Kenyan federation: the Grassroots Saving Trust (called AMT, after translation in Kiswahili). This fund is composed of money from the savings and funds from international donors. It works as a revolving fund: the money gets progressively paid back by the saving schemes who have used the funds for construction and other saving schemes can then borrow themselves from this fund. So the money of the AMT is circulating among the different saving schemes of the federation.

The members who are going to benefit from the first houses are called ‘the borrowers’. For one house, the saver contributes 10% of the cost with its own savings; the saving scheme lends another 10% which the beneficiary saver will then have to pay back. The 80% remaining is borrowed from the federation fund AMT. The savings scheme needs to write a letter to apply for an AMT loan, which needs to be paid back over the years by ‘the borrower’ once he/she owns a house. Depending on how much a borrower can afford to save everyday, it takes 8 years on average for him/her to pay for his/her house.
Members don’t need to save a lot everyday to get a house, they need to be ACTIVE and to save regularly.

The federation network

The networking between the savings schemes is the strength of the federation. This is how the different groups exchange information and knowledge and bring each other support. The federation is what links all the members together so they can stand as one to defend the interests and priorities of the slum dwellers, at national level, and worldwide. But the federation exists if people feel part of it, and if they support each other between communities so that they grow strong and can all move forward together.

The saving groups are the roots of the federation. Together, they form a savings scheme (at parish level in Uganda) within which they discuss the issues affecting them in their area, and agree on solutions to their problems (like houses, sanitation facilities…).

All the saving schemes together form the National Slum Dwellers Federation. This is where the different groups can share their experience and reflect on the problems of slums in Uganda. This is also where they can decide to join efforts and set up a financing facility to benefit the whole federation.

Together, the different federations of each country form the SDI network. Through  this international network, federations can exchange information and support, compare their experience as federations of different countries, but also speak with one strong voice on the international scene.

Getting the youth involved

It is important that the youth does not get left out of the federation movement. We need to design special programmes that responds to their needs and in which they can get involved, such as income-generating activities, so that they learn how to engage themselves for their community and respect their elders.

In Kenya, the federation groups noticed that the youth were being left out of their project, yet they are facing a lot of problems: unemployment, lack of education and professional training, lack of recognition by the government… So they designed a programme within the federation specifically targeted at supporting the youth: they organise them in teams and involve them in income-generating activities  in group (growing of organic products; selling of doughnuts…). They also did an enumeration of the youth living in the slums in order to advocate for their access to government funds for the youth.

New slogan for Uganda

The members of the Kenyan federation have a slogan: “Muungano – Nguvu yetu” (Togetherness is our strength). We still don’t have a slogan in Uganda. We thought of “Okwegatte – Ge Mmanyi” as a suggestion for our own slogan in Uganda.

Report jointly written by Mrs Sauda Sebbi, Mrs Kagoro Zaimabu, Mr Serugo Denis Richard, Mr Nsubuga Ganga, and Ms Julie Crespin