HABITAT III Quito, 2016 SDI Heads to Quito 17 Grassroots leaders 14 SDI affiliates from Africa, Asia, and Latin America 80+ Speaking engagements 6.5 million WhatsApp messages in SDI Habitat III Group (Joke!) Rose Molokoane: New WUC Chair Quito started with a bang for grassroots women when SDI’s own Rose Molokoane was nominated Chairperson of the World Urban Campaign (WUC) by a vote of 21/31. Launched in Rio de Janeiro in March 2010, the World Urban Campaign (WUC) is governed by a Steering Committee that was formalized at its fifth meeting in Shanghai during the 2010 Word Expo ‘Better City, Better Life’. The Steering Committee is the WUC’s governing body and is comprised of selected UN-Habitat’s official partner organizations. The Steering Committee is responsible for establishing the Campaign’s goals and objectives, defining the activities, strategies, annual work plan, and setting the Campaign’s governing procedures. “This will not be a talkshop. It will be a WORKshop” said Rose Molokoane as she summed up the role of the group. When I saw Rose and the way she moderated, I felt so touched. SDI is moving somewhere.” - Sarah Nandudu SDI Booth SDU The SDI Booth at the HIII Exhibition center was a lively space for discussion, a 360 degree slum experience, and whole lot of singing. Adorned with SDI’s new branding, the booth was a big hit with visitors, who used Google Glass to enter the slums of South Africa and spoke to federation leaders from across the Global South about their work and aspirations. Women’s Assembly On Sunday 15th October, SDI chaired the grassroots breakout session at the Women’s Assembly, which produced the following committments and requests from Member States during implementation of the New Urban Agenda: Grassroots commitments a) Grassroots urban poor groups will profile and map 100 cities ahead of the Kuala Lumpar conference b) Grassroots urban poor groups will present their data and use this to identify investments priorities in cities of the Global South c) Grassroots urban poor groups will mobilize communities – especially urban poor women women – to be the leaders of the upgrading process throughout cities in the Global South d) Through peer-to-peer exchange and profiling/mapping, grassroots urban poor groups will monitor implementation of the NUA What we need to make it happen a) Governments and donor partners must prioritize support to grassroots urban poor groups to profile and enumerate cities over consultants as means of building capacities, combatting inequality, building active citizens, and generating the information required for inclusive urban development b) As partners in the implementation of the New Urban Agenda, the role of grassroots urban poor groups must be resourced adequately c) Commitment from government to use grassroots urban poor collected data in urban and resilience planning d) Government and development partners to recognize that grassroots urban poor women are contributing their savings to upgrading cities and these resources should be considered an investment in urban futures e) Community participation is not the same as partnership. The roles and responsibilities of communities and government in urban planning must be clearly articulated and resourced. It must be institutionalized in binding agreements. SDI Board of Governors The SDI Board of Governors (BOG) meeting was held on Tuesday the 18th of October. The meeting was Chaired by Minister of Human Settlements, South Africa - Lindiwe Sisulu. Rose Molokoane began SDI’s presentation to the BOG with a summary of the past year’s achievements. Farouk Braimah supplemented with a presentation of indicator tracking at the mid-point of SDI’s 2013-2017 Strategic Plan. This presentation clearly demonstrated that SDI is on track to meet its objectives and outcomes. Sarah Nandudu provided an update on SDI’s UPFI Strategy and Wilma Adams gave a financial overview. A rich discussion transpired, in which members and observers from Swedish Sida, the ED’s office at UNHabitat, Habitat Norway and the Brazilian and Swedish development sector praised SDI for the depth and breadth of its growth and impact in recent years. In addition, they teased out strategies for enhancing BOG support to SDI efforts to implement the NUA and SDGs. The BOG paid particular attention to SDI efforts to organize and grow youth membership, to gather urban data in partnership with government, and to expand access to renewable energy in slums. They noted with high praise, SDI’s growing influence on global urban policy discussions. General Assembly of Partners In October 2014, during the first Urban Thinkers Campus held in Caserta/ Italy, the World Urban Campaign initiated the General Assembly of Partners (GAP). As special initiative proposed by the World Urban Campaign, the GAP aims to serve as an interim broad-based deliberative platform for non- governmental partners in order to develop a consensus for a joined outcome document. The GAP was formally launched at the Seconding Preparatory Committee for Habitat III (Prepcom 2) in Nairobi on 13 April 2015 and is now run by the Habitat III Secretariat. In the GAP plenary, SDI urged members to support local stakeholder implementation and monitoring of the NUA - particularly urban poor communities in partnership with local authorities. Community monitoring of the NUA at the local level will be essential for transparent assessment of progress and ownership of the NUA” - Rose Molokoane Expanded KYC Campaign Launch On Wednesday 20th, SDI launched the second phase of its expanded KYC Campaign in partnership with Cities Alliance and UCLGA. The lively launch, which coincided with the launch of SDI’s new website (showcasing slum dweller surveys, stories, films, struggles and aspirations), was full of singing, laughter, and poignant statements about the value of community gathered data in implementing and monitoring the NUA and SDG goals. Oh, we made a lot of noise during the Know Your City launch!! Everybody was telling us, but we had to keep singing.” - Hellen Villarin Know Your City Netwoking Event Following the celebratory launch, a detailed panel discussion took place about the KYC Campaign, with moving testimonies from slum dwellers from Ghana, Liberia, and Zambia about their work to profile and map all the settlements in their cities. Youth federation member from Monrovia, Bill Harris, had the audience captivated by his tales of profiling and enumerating West Point. West Point is a settlement of over 60,000 people at high risk from rising sea levels and eviction. Keynote speaker, Minister Sisulu (Human Settlements, South Africa) was touched by the presentations and spontaneously committed to convene a meeting of African Housing and Human Settlements Ministers in January to seek pledges of political and financial support to SDI affiliates to continue the important work. Members of the audience were moved - a number to tears, and the entire SDI team was kept busy collecting business cards and commitments to support the process. The media quickly sought out federation members to interview about the value of community collected data. Ask me how many people in West Point? I will tell you. Ask me how many toilets? I will tell you. How many schools? I can say I am now an expert on my settlement.” - Bill Harris CoLab for Change Screening On Sunday 16th, SDI, Cities Alliance and GIZ screened one of six collaborative change case study films, produced by Know Your City TV. The case study screened was on the work of the Ghana federation as part of the Lands Services and Citizenship program in Accra. Three of the stars of the documentary film were present: Janet and Haruna from the federation and a government official from Accra. Each gave a short presentation at the conclusion of the screening to explain the collaborative partnerships that have enabled their success and the process of training youth to document their stories as part of KYC TV. SDI, Cities Alliance and GIZ professional representatives also made short presentations on the merits of collabortive development approaches. In the video, all was me! And yet, there were big names there to see.” - Janet Adu