Innovative funding model allows urban poor to determine their own future

Outside of the Khayelitsha Metrorail Station (c)Stokperdjie/Wikimedia

Rose Molokoane, who helps allocate millions of dollars to urban improvement projects around the world, lives in a South African informal settlement. She has spent more than 20 years organising urban poor communities, helping them to pool savings and obtain land and housing. Molokoane is also a prominent member of Urban Poor Fund International, the first global fund to give poor people direct control over development spending in cities.

"We are sick and tired of becoming the objects of development," she told an audience at a conference in Brazil last year. "We want to build our own destiny."

The fund was launched in 2007 by Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI), a network of community-based federations in 33 countries across Asia, Africa and Latin America. Since then, it has channelled more than $17.8m (£11m) in capital and technical assistance to more than 150 community-run projects in cities.

Source: The Guardian

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