It is now clear that the present systems of economic development and increasing rate of urbanization will lead to more and more income disparity and greater and greater problems in cities unless urban poverty is addressed properly. This brings up several important questions:

These are some very critical points which need to be considered and developed much more seriously. This involves re-thinking and experimenting with new ways of working, rather than merely following the conventional approaches within the existing institutional systems. Making small adjustments to old systems, old ways of thinking and old ways of working is not enough to keep up with the rapid social and economic changes that are coming with globalization, or the exploding scale and complexity of problems with poverty in cities.

Since 1992, the Urban Community Development Office (UCDO) in Thailand has been experimenting with new development processes to address urban poverty in Thailand. The challenge has been to use the Urban Poor Development Fund to generate holistic urban community development by poor people themselves - at a national scale. Today, through the very basic activity of community savings and credit, more than 600 urban poor community savings and credit groups in forty provinces throughout the country have organized themselves into community networks in each city. These community networks have become a collaborative development mechanism belonging entirely to communities within the same constituencies to develop solutions to problems they face, through land acquisition and housing projects, community enterprise, community welfare strategies, community development funds, environmental improvement activities, etc.

At the same time, the community networks have strengthened the negotiating status of poor communities in the city, and initiated innovative and effective collaborations and partnerships with other urban actors in city-wide development projects which affect the urban poor. The community networks have also joined forces with other civil groups in the cities influence the broader directions of city development. This kind of citizen network can work as a crucial development mechanism to bridge the gap of understanding which exists between the urban poor and the formal system, and to help balance this crucial political relationship.

The building of such citizen networks has become something of a trend, and has proven to be an effective way of addressing issues of urban poverty - by the poor themselves. Besides the experiments with UCDO in Thailand, there have been a number of interesting experiences which show the enormous potential of this new approach in several countries around the Asia region. It is time to make use of the knowledge gathered from these experiments in order to establish a new, forceful development direction in the region which can address urban poverty in our Asian societies much more effectively than in the past.

Part 2: Experiences from UCDO Thailand

2.2       Urban Community Development Office

UCDO was set up in 1992 as an attempt of the Thai Government to take a new approach and develop a new process to address urban poverty. 

The Government granted a revolving fund of 1,250 million Baht (about US$ 32 million) through the National Housing Authority*  to set up a special program and new autonomous unit known as the Urban Community Development Office to address urban poverty at national scale. 
The program sought to improve living conditions and increase the organizational capacity of urban poor communities through the promotion of community savings and credit groups and the provision of integrated loans at favorable interest rates as wholesale loans to community organizations. 
This new Urban Poor Development Fund was to be accessible to all urban poor groups who organized themselves to apply for loans for their development projects.

For the urban poor, organizing themselves into savings and credit group is a simple, direct and uncomplicated way of taking care of their immediate day-to-day needs. Savings activities become a tool which links poor people within a community to find ways of working together, from handling simple basic credit needs to managing more complex development activities which link them with the formal system. Savings and credit groups become a significant entry point for a community's own development process, to come together as a community, and to link with external resources. And the Urban Poor Development Fund is the resource with which community people develop themselves.

The idea, however, is not simply to provide low-interest loans to the poor. Community savings and credit activities are seen as a means for engendering a community's own holistic development, which should gradually be able to deal with the root causes of poverty. Much more important than cheap loans is the development of community managerial capacity and stronger community organizations which are able to lead various community development processes. It is therefore important that development process include community action planning and the creation of partnerships with other local development actors - especially the municipalities - and to link up with various other local development activities. The process of continuous learning and development within and between poor communities must be the focal development mechanism to address problems of urban poverty, mainly by the urban poor themselves, using the Urban Poor Development Fund as their basic resource.

2.3 Community Networking as a joint development mechanism

One of the most significant aspects of UCDO's work has been the process of linking together the urban poor savings and credit groups in the same city and district, or with similar development issues and common interests to form many different community networks. Networks have also been organized at various levels - from national, regional, within-city, zonal and district-wise. In fact, no particular format about community network have been proscribed, but the networks have developed according to the interest of the groups involved, in accordance to their own changing context.

Since 1996, UCDO has collaborated with DANCED to develop Urban Community Environment Activities (UCEA), using the programme's Environment Fund to allow community networks to make decisions and to implement community environmental improvement projects in a given constituency, with advice from other local actors. The conditions of the program have brought together community groups to work as stronger community network in making decisions, and in promoting, implementing and managing all the development activities involved in any community project of the network. Therefore, each community which is linked to the network has direct access to the wealth of knowledge and experiences from several other community groups and has the chance to benefit from their development activities at the same time. In this way, all work and all successful processes in any particular community becomes learning source for the whole network. Also, when problems emerge, the network can become a joint mechanism to deal with problem of the members as well.

3.2    Diverse Types of Urban Poor Community Networks

There are different types of community networking. The basic idea behind a network should be how to create linkages in ways that the urban poor communities control as much as possible. The idea of community networking is not a new one, but the forms of community networks which are clearly controlled and clearly understood by the communities themselves are not too common. Most conventional community networks are led by outsiders, as part of a strategic process that is organized and controlled by government organizations or other outside organizations, for poor people.

Because of this history of outside control, it is important that community networks be organized from the bottom-up - from the smallest constituency and acting as the base to link with larger constituencies. In Thailand, community networks begin by linking among communities in the same district or the same city, as a basic network formation, then link together at provincial, regional and national levels. There are also community networks which link with each other around the same common development issues, such as networks of communities located on State Railway land, communities along canals, or communities linked by shared enterprises or welfare activities. Each type of community network provides a common platform for communities with common backgrounds or interests to work together to attain their continuous development objectives as well as to negotiate together, as a group, for related structural or policy change.

3.3       Integrated Development Functions of Community Networks to address urban poverty

Once communities organize themselves into community networks, a larger community development mechanism begins to emerge to deal with their development in a much deeper and much larger scale, gradually linking to the causes of various poverty problems. Some examples from the process in Thailand are summarized here :

3.3.1   Community network to address land and housing problems

Most urban poor groups have serious land and housing problems. Insecurity of land tenure and eviction problems prevent the urban poor from accessing their basic rights and in settling their lives in the city properly. Behind this situation, there are large, structural problems of land distribution and income disparity which are part of the present economic system. These structural problems are too great, too difficult and too expensive for any single urban poor person or even for any single poor community to resolve alone. This is the structural point where a community network can play an important role in resolving problems too big for individuals.

In Thailand, several types of community networks are dealing in several different, interesting ways with problems of land and housing development. Some of these networks are working to address these problems in the following ways :

3.3.2 Community Network to develop quality Savings and Credit Activities as well as a community Joint Development Fund

Community savings and credit activities comprise an important basic development mechanism and become a community's financial resource base for self-managed poverty development by community people. If savings and credit activities can be developed and linked with external process properly, they become a link to other resources and a builder of community capacity to strengthen and increase income earning and create better job opportunities. It can also help urban poor groups improve their financial status and back them up in negotiations with market organizations to increase earning capacity. In Thailand, there have been some interesting developments within community networks around these aspects :

3.3.3 Community Network to develop Community Enterprise Activities

One of the main reasons why people are poor in the first place is because they are entrepreneurially scattered and isolated, not organized in such a way as to compete with the larger and more influential private enterprise sector, and so continue to earn very little. In the communities, where the poor have many different kinds of jobs, it is not easy to organize people with similar job together. This is an area where a community network can be very effective, and the experience in Thailand illustrates several interesting ways in which community networks can help develop community enterprises :

3.3.4    Development of a Community Welfare System by Community Networks

The development of a community safety net to deal with the very poor and disadvantaged groups within urban poor communities, as well as the development of a basic welfare system for urban poor groups are very crucial. During 1999, UCDO has coordinated with the Social Investment Fund to develop a community welfare system using the community network as the central organization among member communities. The process began with network meetings in which each community identified their own particular welfare problems and described the needs of their own community's disadvantaged groups. Then each community conducted its own survey to assist in concrete planning of welfare activities based on present realities. After that, there was meeting to talk about the concrete types of welfare activities could be undertaken - How to do it? How to work? Who to work with? How to coordinate? How to budget? How to organize into several kinds of welfare funds? What should be relationship between the network and community and target group? As a result of this process, most urban poor community networks in Thailand have now organized their own welfare funds to support some of the following welfare activities :

3.3.5     Development of Urban Community Environment Activities by Community Network and Local Partnership Committees

Since 1996, UCDO has coordinated with DANCED to organize Urban Community Environment Fund for urban community environment projects organized by community organizations and community networks. The program has been deliberately designed in such a way as allows community groups to be the main implementators, with the close support from and management by community networks. The plan now is to link the network together through a process of problem identification, decision making, cost-sharing, budget preparation, and project implementation in Local Project Committees, implementation, maintenance, management etc. As a result, about 200 projects have been implemented in the past 2 years. These environmental improvement projects, which include community centres, drainage, water supply, bridges and paved walkways, are much cheaper and much faster in the implementation than most government projects. The most important aspect of these projects is that they not only improve the environment of poor settlements, but they help strengthen the network and to build partnerships with local administrations.

Part 4: CONCLUSION

If any kind of development direction is to multiply the development capacity of the poor to address urban poverty effectively and realistically, it is important to allow multiple mechanisms by the urban poor themselves to emerged and grow.

Citizen networks will become a more a more significant development mechanism to link, to provide communal direction, to learn together and to gradually dissipate the considerable constraints from several structural problems which work against the poor. 

Whether or not this development direction is possible depends largely on the following ingredients :