 Thank you. Welcome everyone. We'll just give people two minutes to come through and then we will start. So if you can just bear with us. And maybe when we wait just some housekeeping, if you can mute your microphone when you are not speaking and those who have variable bandwidth. If you are a speaker, if you can just pop your face so we can at least have a connection to your human face before we get your avatar, that would be very good. I think it makes a difference to how we experience this type of meeting if we can kind of like put a face to the people speaking. So you don't have to keep your video on for the duration of the meeting but it would be good to just see who we are speaking with. Thank you. I think we can start. I will just quickly do a run of the meeting and we can start. We have an hour and a half left now. So we will try and be efficient on time. To our speakers, I will raise my hand. It doesn't mean five. It means like summarize your time is up. So if you see me raising my hand, not the virtual hand, but my real hand, it means your time is up. So good morning everyone and thank you for making the time to participate in our session. It's part of the community best adaptation 16, which is an event that SDI, the organization director for its secretariat in Cape Town, as well as our partner cities alliance are very privileged to host. My name is Beth Chitekwemiiti. I'll be your moderator for this event. We have a great array of speakers who share experiences across the SDI network of local elite adaptation. We also have the privilege of our partners from the city authorities in Freetown, as well as cities alliance who we are part of, as well as have went with for over two decades now, to also bring in their perspective into what it is that local elite adaptation puts on the table to address the climate emergency. As a network, our experience has always been that when communities mostly marginalized in our cities face with an emergency, they react and they have to adapt as a matter of course, there is no option. And the processes that have developed have a very clear indication of why this is necessary, but also why it is important that this becomes not only policy, but also practice in that resources are put into these processes. The speakers we have from our network will discuss what they are doing at the local level and how this is being integrated into our cities, their cities react when there is a crisis, both natural as well as men made crisis that communities of the urban pool have often have to address. So it is a privilege to have all of you here. We will essentially start with the screaming of a short film made by our youth media team that we call KYC TV, know your city TV. This is a really impactful way of documenting people's experiences on the ground and then we will go into community experiences from Uganda, Malawi, the Philippines, as well as Sierra Leone. And then we will have responses from our partners, from Cities Alliance, we have Julian Baskin, and then we have Mr. Abdul Karimara, who is a Development Planning Officer from the Free Town City Council. And then we will have about 20 minutes of a moderated discussion at the end. We also hope that we can at the end have an opportunity for participants to also put in their inputs. So thank you in the short film please. Many people have chosen business as the major source of livelihood, especially youth and women. But the outbreak of COVID-19 pandemic has posed serious challenge to these businesses. According to the bike riders, it has been difficult for them to survive. Time frame, just the cars up to say six to somebody they say 11 to 12, again another person will do it throughout the night. But now it's not happening, six to nine. We don't see and see the time frame, it affects either side of the time frame, the shot or outside. Many people living along the coastal area survive on fishing. But due to the pandemic, there is a restriction on the number of boats to go out on fishing. We need to get away from the boat to come here because we both need to get a chance to do not see. Although we will get to further, although we can't for money, we are a family. Go buy the fish, you can't drive. You go sell by this hour, you can't drive. You pull them, you go sell, sell quick, you get what you need. It's me picking them. But for more, go on a ronka now. Better not a fish no day. You don't have to have up again for sale, you go buy, you can get what you need. Although business is not good. They will go on a no-bid day, but at the start for sale at 8 o'clock, say then 12 o'clock, midnight. They sell them one bag per day. But from since we go on a ronka, any who sell each one bag, they sell it for 20 to 30. But what have they been doing in order to prevent themselves from the virus? We have a lot of junctions on Saturday, we get robbers and sanitizers. Some of them use sanitizers, some of them the worst we have. And we will be a more than a dozen junctions at the late checkpoint. Anybody can pass to make sure it's the worst we have. The advice I will give the company is to tell them these fish marks, let them use the fish marks like I did on my fish. If they use the fish marks like I did on my fish, they can save the fish and clean it properly. If they use the fish marks like I did on my fish, number two, they can avoid the crowd. But if they can't, they don't take time. And if they wash their hands, then it's your turn. If they wash their hands, it's your turn. Let me tell you that there are four people in the can, in the shop, in the studio and in the studio. But none are too far from making the studio. When they come for can eat, I will encourage them to wash their hands before they come inside. The question is, what will be the future of the people when it's all over? Will it get better or remain the same? Many thanks for that very interesting perspective on what was happening in Freetown during the COVID pandemic. I will move over to the next session around community experiences. Just checking if Sarah is now in the house. We have Sarah Nandudu from Uganda, who will be followed by Modesa Kapala from Malawi and Teresa Karapatana from the Philippines. You will have between you 20 minutes. And as I explained, how you see my end up when you are exceeding your time. Over to you, Sarah first. Thank you. We see your face and then you can meet your Sarah. There are some people with a reference point. Okay, am I seen? Sorry, I have a bit of, I hope you'll get to me, but that's the question that I take off the video because it will disturb me and since the network is not clear. You know, that's all right. At least you know who you are. Okay, thank you, Beth. And I appreciate this meeting to giving us an opportunity to share what we, as the National Islam Transformation of Uganda, we have been able to undertake a number of activities. One, the discussion today looking at locally made adaptations. For me, and bring it from bottom up, our process explains it all because our process is a bottom up approach. And while we are down there mobilizing communities, yes, we are doing it to bring people from the ground to raise them up. So our process alone, while we mobilize people into saving groups, we engage them to do small income generating activities. Alone makes it to be a bottom up approach. And the beauty about it is that we just don't sit to wait to be given what we need. But at least we have solutions to our problems. And hence, we only need people to support us to be able to carry them forward to the next level or for us to achieve what we intend to achieve. So as a network through our savings, we've been able to do a number of activities and looking at how the climate is also affecting us. Not leaving out COVID. After going through a terrible time of COVID times and having everything go down, as a federation, we came up with so many innovations as groups because even before COVID, what people had lively good incomes. But COVID told us that it's not enough. We needed to innovate around so many things to sustain ourselves even when another epidemic comes in. So through the process of learning and exchange and sharing ideas, many of our groups have been able to undertake adaptation projects like creating wealth within their means without even putting capital where communities are unblocking their own drainages and making a living out of the garbage that blocks the drainage system. And we had a chance recently to share in one of the meetings that Cities Alliance organized here in Uganda where we're sharing experiences on how we are adopting, creating innovations to be able to adopt to climate change issues. And we really saw that across SDI family, we are all doing the same things. And this means we are engaging in two peer-to-peer learning which is a beauty about it. And through this, people have been able to earn a living through making waste which is littering their settlements to wealth. We went and saw different groups doing a lot of briquettes. Briquettes is done from by the grade level waste which people just dump in their communities and which waste again blocks the drainage channels leading it to blocking the settlements and causing flooding. And then people are using waste which is polythene papers wasted and thrown in drainage channels but now they pick it up and make recycling which is also earning a living. They are innovating around making the environment clean, avoiding flooding, but also earning a living out of it by recycling. And this has enabled them to create jobs, people earning through recycling. Those who bring waste to be sold to these groups are paid. Those who pick are paid. So within the same arrangement, people are recycling even their own savings to pay others as they earn. They also recycle to earn more money. This is one of the things we feel is so sustaining in communities because they're able to earn and then also make others get jobs. But besides that, we know that in our slum, we have contaminated waters due to low level of water and once you dig deep, you fall into water. So you can't dig a pitlar tree in such an environment. But through innovations, we've been able to put up sanitation blocks which are climate-friendly in such a way that people do not have to dig on the ground but just make a channel or make a chamber where you just use worms. And the worms are used to eat your waste and then the waste is again generating manure which is being utilized to put fertilizers in urban farming. So while you do this, you're responding to environmental protection by not contaminating the water. But at the same time, people are able to get a decent sanitation unit to use which is climate-friendly, environmental-friendly as well as supporting them even and the livelihood. Because actually in Kampala, one of that is a lady who is rearing these worms and is able to sell them to other people to build this prototype of sanitation blocks. And to do this, City of Zalaya has also supported us to do under KGE, which is a big infrastructure project going to affect a number of wetlands. We try to showcase these sanitation units and communities have come to accept it. However, the only challenge you need is to make sure that we scale it up so that a wider range of communities take it up since it is environmentally friendly to each endeavor. But above all, this has created, do I stop? Oh, it's a warning. Okay, thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Let me stop you again. All right. Thank you. Sorry for the abrupt stopping. When I leave my hand, I'm just asking you to summarize so that we can move on to the next person. Thank you, Sarah, for that. Can I move to Modesta from Kapa'la from Malawi? Hello. Good morning, everybody. Yes, you can hear me. Yes, I'm here to also put your video just briefly and then you can switch it off. It's off. Yes, I'm saying we just briefly so we can see you and then you can switch it off. It's difficult here. Okay, then that's a problem. Sir, please go ahead. Please go ahead. Okay. My name is Modesta Kapa'la from Malawi Federation. I want to start with the, let me say that now a dance in Malawi, it is not a surprise to hear of friends in the cities. Poor access to land and housing for people in the informal settlement has resorted in people living in disaster prone areas. There are many people living in liver banks, as you can see in the pictures, in our pictures there, due to poverty, many people who have run just build temporary circuits, which can all collapse easily. This problem is getting to too much due to COVID-19. So, so the Malawi Alliance, the rise to that for sustainable transformation and indeed for sustainable building of urban resilience, there is no, there is need to build a critical mass of people. And this is what we do, we mobilize informal settlement residents to become aware of their problems and to start doing various actions in order to address the problems. We conduct meetings with governor structures, like what development committees, what civil protection committees, local chiefs and representatives of various ordinary groups of people. This includes women and the youth. We help them understanding their needs and to do this. We support communities to generate up to date community data for use in lesbos and recover. We do this through mapping and profiling processes. The information corrected is used in community planning and prioritizing. The information is also used in negotiating for improvement in their service provisions. As you can see, the map used as evidence when conducting meetings with local authorities, even city councils, but also even when planning for local initiatives, which are mostly funded by local generated community development funds. The Malawi Alliance strongly believe in co-production. We have there for continuing to enhance collaboration between communities and local government. This we do by facilitating the creation of platforms for meetings between the local people and local authorities and other services, other service providers. These meetings help the authorities to understand the pressing needs of people in the informal settlements. The meetings are also used to get ideas from the commenters on how issues from their profile can be dealt with. The Malawi Alliance has partnership with the city councils, the Department of Disaster Management Affairs, and the Department of Urban Development under the Minister of RANS and the Department of Environmental Affairs. We also work with other local and international NGOs like CCJP, TITOSA Foundation, UNHUBDANT, CONSENI UNVERSAL, and others. We are currently piloting a SLAM-upgrading project. The Malawi Alliance strongly believe that we cannot talk about building resilience in the absence of actions to improve people's livelihoods. We continue to exercise on promoting race, climate, dependent and non-climate dependent livelihoods diversification. To date, over 500 communities, members, and mainly from 18 federation-saving groups and the majority who are women, have benefited with skills such as sterility, designing, shoe making, tie and dye, sausage making, mushroom farming, and making peanuts. They are also trained in entrepreneurship and financial literacy skills. The Malawi Alliance now has the Zamanja Skills Cooperative. These groups and members involved in various ads and craft. The cooperative will be formalized soon and will be accessed credit and other opportunities. The Malawi Alliance has supported Could you wind up? We paint the program too much and we would like to give others an opportunity if you could summarize it. Okay, the Malawi Alliance also is piloting natural-based dissolutions and biodevestous actions in the context of informal settlement upgrading and climate change resilience. We support communities to restore vegetation, IG3 planting. We support communities to sustainably manage the best proper disposal. We also promote compost and manure production and this is an in-term generating activity. We also support communities to formulate by laws and on protection of their involvement. They are also locally enforced and they are right in line with the city by laws. Thank you. Thank you very much. Can we move to Teresa and I apologize for rushing you all. Good afternoon. Good morning. I'm Teresa from the Philippines. Hello. Can you hear me? Hello. We can hear you too. We can hear you. Okay. I'm turning off my camera so that my signal won't be affected. Okay, so I would like to present the initiatives of the Homeless Peoples Federation Philippines during the pandemic and also other initiatives that provides you information about how we as a network is operationalizing the local and that adaptation. So just for context, the Federation is an organized group of 102 communities and 258 savings groups operating in the Philippines major islands. So those dots that you see are the places that we are we have active savings groups. So we have community savings. Citywide we undertake citywide mapping and community land acquisition projects. So these initiatives is really focusing on how the communities can be safe, can transfer to safe places during flooding, during cyclones and other. So during the lockdown, which was in March 2020, of course you may have known that the Philippines had the longest lockdowns in the history of COVID. Yeah, so these lockdowns are not just for us not a health risk issue, but a death sentence to the communities because these lockdowns quarantine social distancing just exacerbated or magnified the poverty and inequities that we experience. These measures imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19 resulted to loss of jobs, livelihood, particularly among the informals, the outdoors, tricycle drivers and these loss of income increased the food insecurity affecting particularly children and elderly. So yeah and also the situation in these communities, especially with no adequate services before COVID-19 just worsened access to clean water and reliable power. So along with the lockdown, the social distancing protocols also contributed to problems in mental health and increase in the gender-based violence among families. So we conducted, to address these issues, we conducted community mapping as basis for responding to the needs of the most vulnerable. So these dots are the COVID positive people that the communities are warned that they should not, they should practice health protocols so that they can be safe to the virus. Others, we had community get chance to address hunger, food scarcity, led by the communities themselves. We also responded, the communities also helped in responding using wash facilities initiated by community as part of COVID prevention, education campaign, minimum health protocols. We also distributed health monitoring provisions, supplies, PPEs and others. The pandemic also worsened the mental health issues of the people in the community, especially during the long lockdowns and of course the issues that just make their experiences as poor people become more worsened, just worsened. So we conducted webinars for mental health to support the communities who have exhibited symptoms of depression and other mental issues. These pandemic, we have shown that and we have learned that the communities are self-organizing. So there were urban families that was initiated by the communities to improve the food security with close coordination with the government agencies and right now we have three or four cities that have promising results in this intervention. So we also used the waste materials from the community to help in help cleaning up the environment and more so in dealing with climate change and other issues. Lessons learned, we have realized in this whole pandemic that people with organized communities have bigger chances in surviving the climate impacts of disasters. We also learned that we have to, as a network, we really have to establish and improve our gender mainstreaming program. We have established a more robust monitoring systems and that as a community, those who are more organized have bigger chances in setting up a more meaningful relationship and partnership with their LGUs and local government units. So for us implementing locally led adaptation in different contexts, in contexts of disasters, pandemic, and all other risks, the approach of the network which is really using the social capital of the people on the ground to to build something for themselves and be part of the solution and address in addressing their issues. Those people who have the best information. Thank you Teresa. I'm sorry to cut you. Could you just finalize? So thank you also for giving us a chance to participate in this event and thank you for hearing the voice of the urban board in the Philippines. Thank you. Thank you very much. Again, I apologize for all this very brutal way of moderating but we tried to take too much into this process and I would like to ensure that we have some time to also engage with our audience. Could we move forward to Francis in the referral from Sierra Leone as well as even it's banana from Zimbabwe to talk through their case studies in implementing locally led adaptation in even informal settlements. And Francis and the events you each have about seven minutes each so please I will be more brutal with you. Over to you Francis. Good morning everyone. My name is Francis Refu. They found and directed directors for Center of Dialogue on Human Situations of the Television. Yeah, please. Next slide. So I thank to the Secretary at the City Alliance for organizing the session. Can we go? Okay, great. So quickly what I'm going to talk about I'll just give an introduction to Kurosawa and Federation. We just quickly run through the LLA principle. So my presentation is actually picking on each LLA principle and what is happening around that. Then I'll give just a round up on Lessons Land. Next slide please. Great, of course Kurosawa actually started in 2011 and have been providing supports to the Federation. So as a matter of fact as a professional supporting office it's actually younger than the Federation that actually started with the Sierra YMCA then Kurosawa inherited it and started giving support. So I'll call we know the Federation what happens mobilizing around savings and establishing a voice on a platform for engaging with duty bearers. Next slide please. All right, so quickly the principles here are I think it's really blurred from my side. Please let me just open my screen. So my presentation here it's basically blurred from your end on the screen. All right, so the principle quickly a principle in evolving decision making to the lowest appropriate level addressing structural inequalities faced by women, youth, children, disabled and displaced people and indigenous people and marginalized ethnic groups, providing patient and predictable funding that can be accessed more easily, investing in local capabilities to live an international legacy, building a robust understanding of climate risk and uncertainty, flexible programming and learning, ensuring transparency and accountability and collaborative action. So I have to be reading so that I go a little bit fast from my presentation I've opened here. The early actions the first principle what is going around that we have established a community, a learning platform and a city learning platform actually this provides a democratic space as a community level and a multi-stakeholder inclusive platform at a city level. So communities in the community learning platform discuss issues that bothers around their safety and their protection and their livelihoods and those discussions are taken to the city learning platform which actually hosts a number of state and non-state actors both at local and as well as the state level and so those issues from the community are discussed at that platform. Also communities have been given the opportunity through FedUp to be represented in the National Habitat Committee which is actually a nascent committee that is been supported by the UN Habitat to develop an urban plan for the country. And so FedUp now is part of that committee and of course FedUp was given, the Federation given the opportunity to actually participate in the development of the transform free-turn agenda by way of organizing NIS assessment through focus group discussions. The next LLE which is addressing structural inequalities, the communities federation and the communities have organized themselves through the gender equality and social inclusion program in which embraces participation of or trying to promote participation of people with disability, women and youth you know in all aspects of the development aspiration of the communities. Currently they are also involved in organizing and trying to really promote a robust inclusion, financial inclusion of women living in informal settlements. This is a project that's actually implemented in partnership with the restless development which is an international youth led program and so this is encouraging more young people, people with disability more focus on women you know across the generational spectrum you know and so it is really pushing more in terms of strengthening financial inclusion of those cohorts that have been marginalized when it comes to financial opportunities. Also what we have done is to enhance more protection is we have rolled out our safeguarding through our partnership with the CRS safeguarding policy and practices across you know all the communities that we are working in so that communities will be conscious of what it means you know to provide safeguarding for the vulnerable in communities. All right great okay so the next principle is providing patient and predictable occur we are doing daily savings urban poor fund to what we call locally for the Bambaitra so the Federation is building a capital and attracting you know trying to attract a higher level contribution to an urban poor fund that will be able to finance their initiatives and aspirations. The other one is investing in local capabilities to live and influential so you see that in fact there are a lot of capacity building for the Federation to be able to provide leadership for themselves and be able to participate you know at local as the high level engagement processes which for example the National Chair of the Federation was part of the International Water Association World Water Congress and Exhibition early in the middle of this year sorry and of course we know how the Federation you know as a very grassroots level actually sits on the SDI Council you know and so we also have like doing a research where communities drive you know data collection surveys and research work analysis you know to give actually a community voice so you see how communities are given that space so that some level of initial legacy is built. The other one is building a robust understanding of climates so a lot of action is going on within communities to ensure climate risk you know to address climate risk and uncertainty one we have mobilized CDMCs across informal settlements which we are moving towards not just as responders but being robust as community story as climate change action ambassadors you know and so they are involved currently with in the initiative of the Free Towns Council which is the hashtag free town the tree town they are the drivers the key drivers of planting and growing and tracking of those trees that are being planted to ensure community resilience. We are also conducting a lot of research and building capacities of the local communities so that you know they own up the process but also have the capacity to be able to respond to their needs also do a lot of data collection in areas of risk mapping and risk and hazard mapping so that communities get informed you know and be able to to address their issues. The other last one sorry the other one is flexible programming of course this is the downside of things you know not much has been done even though we are trying to build a local urban platform but we have not been able to successful attract you know contributions you know in terms of funding that will be flexible in programming and in learning most of them are straight jacket and actually very restricted. The other one is ensuring transparency of course we know you are systems even fed up chairman here federation chairman sits on the Kudusapa board because want to ensure transparency for the people you know they were involved in developing the transform free town from the very beginning so they know and keep track of what is going on and if we partner together we are local you will ensure that we establish a platform where communities and and city authorities and even state authorities sit together to co-create solutions through consultations all right okay thank you I understand of course the presentation is available okay thank you everyone I hope in a discussion we have time to finish on what we didn't say much thank you thank you and again I apologize for cutting both these very interesting presentations are short even you have six minutes so could you please yeah really try and keep to the time thank you thank you Beth my name is Yufan the type banana from dialogue on shelter SDI Simbabi so my presentation will mainly focus on the instrumentality of city funds that are being created in partnership between the urban poor and the city authorities of course we have three in Zimbabwe but I just selected one next slide please so I just tried to provide a bit of context in terms of what actually is influencing the creation of these city funds I think mainly in the issue of the legality status so that is mostly placed on informal settlements and how is that she's continuously being used to exclude informal settlements urban development and also I think the national level there are a number of progressive policies that are being created mainly targeting climate change issues but there's a disconnect to the local level the ideas how do we transform or translate the policies into practice then I also tried to summarize what I thought would be key drivers vulnerability mainly targeting informal settlements I think to start with is the unemployment that is driving poverty issues then the informality itself local authorities mostly see the physical spatial aspects and totally go the social and the settlers that are living these settlements then the environmental sensitive locations when informality is mostly prevalent lack of social cohesion mainly in some of the informal settlement then lack of state social security concentrate of evictions that is also driving issues of exclusion next slide please then there's a picture that is just showing one of the informal settlements by the way there was Bansai road but now it is transformed into a galley next slide the next slide is talking about the grassroots responses to these gaps that have been noted at national and local levels so the communities have organized themselves into certain schemes at Zimbabwe Homeless Post Federation they have spearheaded that and through the mobilized savings groups they've created what is known as the Gunganwaipen poor fund 100 percent owned and managed by the communities its main activities to empower poor communities and you mostly used to leverage more resources from the local authorities and other partners and through that established social cohesion the community have been able to conduct community-led informal settlement profiles and then use the data to engage the decision makers so from that social cohesion point of view they've picked a number of adaptation responses that have been taken to date again below is a summary but I doubt people will be able to see it and then the first one obviously is the building of social cohesion then the conducting of settlement profiles then investing in settlement relationship with local authorities through exchanges and the number of interactions with the local authorities then again the innovative technologies that are being introduced by the communities and in Mashingo there is the ecological sanitation trade-offs and then the drilling of bores and installation of private water schemes is a way of also augmenting water supply then the small-scale life of energy and construction loans that is supporting mainly the grassroot vulnerable communities and all that is led to the creation of the Mashingo CCT fund and it was a process that one the community now is the capacity they then engage the local authority to co-own what is known as Mashingo CCT fund next slide please so I just tried to provide a summary of Mashingo's CCT fund the partners they are Zimbabwe Homeless Pulse Federation in Mashingo CCT and Dialogue and Shelter the team of ownership is found by his co-owned co-governed by all the partners the designing of products loans product is currently being reviewed to do a kind of reflect the emerging issues so there's a lot of flexibility then the main objective is to try to prioritize a bread in a livelihood loan so that they target the most vulnerable in again there's a summary of what the fund has managed to do to date it started with the CCT capital of 20,000 in 2021 and to date it has benefited 1,252 of which 96 percent women and then the fund has grown in total to over 1,7175,000 usd then there's another picture which is also showing some of the use of the savings by the local communities then I just try to summarize what the local lead adaptation principles and how the CCT fund and the Gungano fund are trying to be used by the communities and trying to achieve that then the first one building of a strong grassroot voice so obviously equal to the social cohesion beyond the federation membership federation in Mashiungo they've also mobilized the citywide urban pool to form solidarity groups and then create platforms where they occasionally meet and discuss issues that are definitely in their communities and then the profiles that are also community led they've been used to call for meetings and then presented to decision makers and then also used to engage for the improvement of their own communities in addition to building a strong voice the community also have moved on to addressing structural inequalities because I think there is a realization that in as much as we continue to do pilots but if the structural issues are not addressed it will continue to be on a piecemeal and pilot level so the communities through the creation of the city fund the idea then is how can we sit on the negotiating table with the local government and then discuss issues of development that way it will not continuously exclude informal settlements but rather include them when in the development discourse so obviously the inclusion of informal settlement and then it also offered a good avenue then of then having a conversation around slumber breeding in a 930 manner whereas before the city fund the communities would then come individually but through a city fund it offers that institutional platform to discuss that then there is also understanding that the periodic community risk assessment mainly captures issues of climate change risk and how they can be also addressed then lastly the collaborative action and investment mainly the co-production of data and then identification of interventions by parties involved with the community and the local authorities themselves and then the contribution by the city in the funds not only addressing the issues from the city side but having a conversation and collectively agreeing on priorities drawing more contribution from the informal settlements then I just tempted to put on gaps that are being noted as we are doing the work then obviously there is lack of access to climate change finance and then the framing of national policies currently they are divorced from local action and not also recognizing the capacities that are inherent in those communities thank you bed thank you very much events and thank you to all our presenters I think that's a like a a rich array of experiences and very interesting insights as well as practice on the ground I'll now move on to our partners we as I introduced before we have Mr Abdul Karim Maraf who is a Development Learning Officer in Freetown City Council and Mr Julian Baskin from the Cities Alliance what we would like to to ask from you gentlemen and starting with Julian is what have you if your experience has been that is unique in terms of our working with community organized communities such as those represented here by the SDI affiliates we hoping you have about 20 minutes or 10 minutes each in the hope that we can catch up in between time and be able to give an opportunity to our audience over to you Julian all right thank you so much Beth can you hear me first of all perfect what an amazing array of experiences and the very very first thing that comes to my mind is that there was a time when data was the primary purpose of SDI people would go into communities collect data and data in of itself became everything what I'm seeing here is that we've now moved from data to real action on the ground using that data to get things done organizing people to make to make a difference so there's a real maturity in in what is being done on the ground the key message from my side is something along these lines and it's not a great message you know the message for me is that the world is becoming increasingly complex there is less and less consensus as to what needs to be done in this world there there is an enormous amount of politicization and falsehood and opportunism in the prevailing sort of political context in which we work and all that all sums up to me is that in a completely in an environment that is going to be changing and and and we can talk about climate change in that context the world will change in almost every possible way and I think that communities if they are not organized will be forgotten the idea that someone from outside is going to come to the rescue is simply coming less and less likely as we go forward and as every country starts to face a whole ray of of of the own crises and the own distractions so I think the very very point the first point I want to make is someone from Malawi made a comment about the need for critical mass absolutely the the the agenda has to move towards making sure that in every one of the seven and I'm just talking about Africa in here and I know that there that we have people from the Philippines and from from Asia but I think it's pretty much the same thing you know I think that in every one of the seven thousand or so towns that exist in in in Africa seven thousand cities in Africa we have to make sure that there is some form of organization of the urban poor someone who is able to to talk with trust now the second point which was made I think made from by the person from Zimbabwe critical mess is one thing trusted leadership is the other if you have critical mess and you have trusted leadership you set the platform to be completely transformative and what I've seen of SDI at the moment and the work that's happening is that there's progress on both those fronts but both those fronts need to accelerate we need to be developing a wider spread but also a deeper a deeper leadership structure right down into into the grassroots now the reason why I'm saying this is increasingly the person who gives the message is the most important person if the wrong person is giving the message people simply do not believe it you can only for example imagine what's happening in much of the northern context where people simply don't believe climate change because they don't believe the interests who are telling them about climate change they don't believe much what is said there's always a counter narrative for almost anything that takes place so the future is really going to depend on people from within the community who are trusted by the community who are exposed to the real issues both globally all the way down to locally who can transmit a message to the community and be trusted that that that message doesn't reflect any other agenda other than the interests of the urban poor and what I'm seeing in in many other presentations is precisely that but I'm just putting into words what I think needs to be is the bigger agenda around around this now it seems it seems to me that when it comes to when it came to covered and the pandemic it was a pandemic and at the time when there was no vaccine there was an enormous amount of interest by the global north by the international donors etc to make sure that the pandemic didn't spread why because they had a strong vested interest at that time but the moment that vaccines became available the moment vaccines became available and they could protect themselves against the pandemic and the worries began to subside of it you know then that interest tied down quite substantially which reminds me very much of historically historically you know there's always been cities you can go to the most ancient ruins of this world and you'll find that in every one of those ancient cities there always were water and sanitation systems in the poorest areas of ancient cities and then as we go into the modern world we discover that the poor areas don't have water and they don't have sanitation what changed what changed was there was a time when the rich completely depended on the poor the health of the poor for their own health if a poor person got sick because of bad sanitation disease was spread directly to the rich but once with the advent of antibiotics etc and health facilities people got less concerned about that and they forgot about the interests of the poor so why am I saying this I'm saying that I think we have to start building a consciousness amongst cities and amongst people generally that development is going to be as local as possible and that people have to be equipped for the future and the way to be equipped for the future is to make sure that you understand the future you understand those challenges and you gear up for them and and for me the starting point is a very basic starting point the starting point is for everyone to understand where they are at the moment where they want to go in the future what strategies they will adopt to get there and what leadership they're going to need to take them there and I see that type of planning happening throughout SDI and I think that puts SDI in all the federations in a very strong position to start spreading this agenda because without without this agenda who is you simply won't be able to defend themselves against climate change I think and it's a final comment I'm not running out of time a little bit and best getting getting a bit a bit agitated you know I think that our cities are still growing and I think that there's still time to make sure that we make that a great deal of planning at a local level happens to make sure that people settle minimally in the right place even if we don't have detailed sites planned minimally then people must settle in the future in places that don't impact on the natural ecosystems of the city and don't and aren't obviously areas that are hazardous going forward so I think one of the agendas that needs to take place at the local level is is engaging with the long-term city strategy to make sure that when people do come to the city when the city expands as all the cities are expanding they expand in a way that doesn't play into the disaster of climate change but helps people to adapt to climate change by having people on one safer land so just my final comment is I sense from these presentations today that there's been a huge amount of progress it's a progress from understanding no city was there was a campaign when it started to actually doing actions in your city to make sure that the cities become more resilient going forward thank you just for those words thank you very much for the opportunity thank you so much Julian and thank you very much for for those very insightful responses to the presentation I would like to move over to Mr Abdul Karim Mara and as with my question to Julian I would like to just find from you what you found is unique in your working with the federation and Kudasapa in Freetown and how do you think that level of local organizing helps in the implementation of local needs adaptation work over to you Mr Mara thank you very much for having me we all believe that while most cities are shrinking many urban centers are seen rapid and largely on control population groups creating a pattern of urbanization most of this group is now taking place in developing countries and is concentrated in informal settlement and slums therefore the very urban areas that are growing faster are also those that are least equipped to deal with the threat of climate change having said that the fed up Kudasapa has been supporting the Freetown City Council in diverse ways for the past 20 years as a council we believe if we were to address community aspiration adequately we must work with civil societies who are more closer to the people because in the past distribution of services has been from the top directly to the community we are in there were a lot of leakages but with the coming in of the local council and working with local NGOs who are operating directly with these communities it has helped us tremendously in addressing community needs and also have helped us to address these needs by way of how they should be addressed in a prioritized manner fed up has been engaged with Freetown City Council our Freetown City Council has been collaborating with fed up in community enumeration we've been also working together to develop the transform Freetown plan of course wherein we saw their relevance doing what we call the needs assessment and eventually the needs were prioritized and also they were engaged or involved in community kitchen informal settlement during the COVID-19 lockdowns we know the impact of climate change and we believe if we were to address the impact of climate change a lot need to be done especially in Freetown where the speed of uncontrolled development has taken place which has related to the cutting down on trees and if we were to address the problem of flooding that a lot need to be done by way of growing trees so the fed up has also been working with Freetown City Council hashtag from Freetown the Freetown to restore mangroves in many many areas about farming in 10 informal settlements saving practices creates the opportunity to promote financial inclusion having said that the value found in all this includes it is this community entry and engagement to FCC and partners it also creates and organize structures to engage communities build bridges between council and the settlements generate better understanding and insight of community dynamics and also enhance community ownership because we believe if the community adequately involved in development process they will take ownership of whatever comes happens to be the outcome and that we believe will lead to sustainability and also address community health needs it also lays the foundation for leaving no one behind that failure that fulfilled the inclusive city agenda thank you very much thank you very much and thank you for keeping to the time as well and for those very insightful comments as well as a reflection of just how the work of the Kodasapa and the Sierra Leone Federation aligns with the aspirations of the Freetown City Council we have come to the end of our presentations and we have 20 minutes where we would like to have a discussion take questions from the floor as well as ask our our panelists to to make additional comments I have sort of like a three key questions related to the presentations and then I'll also look at the chat box to see if we have additional questions so one of the questions relates to from what do you think is required of communities and other stakeholders to bring scale to the work that we we has been presented here it would be really good to have a conversation around that and then we had I saw a question in the chat related to the role of faith-based organizations is and also a question around what is perceived as a external handholding perhaps our our audience member I think is Jagannata could elaborate on on on that point so then also how does meaningful partnership with organized community increase the impact of local adaptation work I think from both Julia and Abdul's interventions we've seen just how the linkages between development partners as well as city authorities how what they see is the potential linkages and the the increase in impact of these partnerships so those are kind of like the framing questions any one of our partners or participants and our presenters you're very welcome to answer to to those questions thank you our with your show of hands I can ask people to come in I had someone with iPhone iPhone XR and they end up earlier and asked them to to put their intervention in the chat box but I haven't seen it Teresa Evans Francis any responses to some of the questions that have been raised yes Francis okay thank you very much Beth maybe I'll take on the first one that talks about what is required for communities and other partners to bring scale to what is presented here I think there has to be a deliberate an action particularly for the local and state institutions to prioritize the needs of people living in slums and informal settlements oftentimes while we not excluding myself while we are planning for the city it is mostly about beautiful roads in the already formalized areas electricity and water so that you know if you like the the middle class or the aristocrats who have to have the service it leads to or no consideration for the poor but looking at the free town context through our citywide profile in which together with the FCC that we agreed that there are about 68 to 72 informal settlements which actually constitute 35 to 40 percent of the free town population I guess that is a huge critical mass and so if there is no deliberate action to address the needs of those localities then it means our government our system is deliberately ignoring four 35 to 40 percent of the residents of free town so I think there has to be but over and above that is that already communities are making effort so in terms of prioritizing the the state the local and state actors should really recognize the role that these people are playing you know in terms of ensuring that you know that their lives are secured that their communities are resilient out of their meager resources out of their desperate situation they are working hard to actually find solutions to I think state actors local actors should really capitalize on those potential on those opportunities to really to bring to scale you know as I mentioned earlier on that like the federation is building the urban power fund called for the Bambai trust for the Bambai is actually a crew or meaningful for the future so which means these people have been futuristic and they are calling on government to say partner with us if we're able to pull our resources together you bring in what you have and we we have what we got we'll be able to to actually bring to scale or to be able to address a lot of the issues that government is is grappling with but unfortunately I often ask this question that really it states local private sectors no one wants to do business with the poor but then they are failing to realize that in in the midst of that poverty there are huge potential you know amnesty people that if it is well harnessed I mean miracles in quotes will really happen out of the situation just so we have an opportunity for others to to to respond anyone else from the from our panelists and our responders to the questions that are posed on the screen and also from the audience I think there is a Nigerian experience that has also been put in the chats good to hear from the one that the Nigerians have also done around COVID and climate over this very difficult period anyone else from our panelists who would like to comment? Hello good morning I'm from Nigerian Federation I think we've been working seriously with the government and university and we are grateful especially the Lasura Legacy Resilience office last row last row so they've been working with the university with the Nigerian Federation we've been having series of meetings and these meetings have been fruitful because we've been seeing the impacts in our communities like I chatted in the box communities that have been flooded we've had governments from the from the government agencies coming in with their buddhas trying to come and help us pack the canals and they are working on the drainage so there's actually a reduction in the aspect of flooding in some communities and on our own side at the Federation we've been able to get seeds and plants in some communities across the waterfront where we know those things are very useful and we are presently working on a project with some individuals from the university too who are helping to register children in school for those parents that lost their means of livelihood since the time of the lockdown their children have not been able to go back to school so they are giving us funds we are paying for registration school uniforms and we are getting books for them also thank you very much for that intervention um there is also another hand from our panelist Evans would you like to come in um related to the questions uh how meaningful partnerships uh help in what we can do to scale up over to you Evans uh thank you but I think for me it all goes down to how we are identifying our problem whether I think it's the communities and the local government we do have a shared position I think in as much as we like that consensus there's bound to be that fight to convince each other and ask him counter uh justification to just to propose certain um action so I think the first issue is then to identify what are those structural barriers that are kind of further excluding the involvement of those communities into the negotiations with local government so I think the idea of co-producing data from informal settlement is a good starting point because both the local government and the communities will be part of that process and hopefully they will see the challenges from a common point of view and then the generation of solutions will also be from that same angle the the critical mass that has been already registered by the communities is also something that the communities will continuously mobilize the citywide communities in machine go example there is the resident platforms which the community of machine we have started with the local authority where also other non-governmental state actors and also some of the government agencies it's a non-threatening platform where these partners also come in every conversation drawing our inputs from each other I think that's my input in terms of how we can scale up the current pilots thank you um Teresa Sarah um from from your perspective is Federation leaders are working on the ground where do you see the bottlenecks being and what do you see is what is required in order to scale up the work that you have done in the successful work that you have done then we also have a question directed at Malawi at the Malawi Federation where they would like to know more about waste management is it possible for them to explain more on the daily routine in waste management and also the challenges they are facing so is it Modesta Modesta there's a direct question to you and then I'm also challenging Teresa and Sarah to to respond to the questions that are on the on the platform thank you perhaps Modesta first and then Sarah and Teresa you are muted Modesta hi hello I just want to respond to the question that would like to know about the waste management here in the Malawi cities uh this our city castles don't correct the waste so as the results we we organized women from Federation and others from non-Federation members to correct the waste from different houses and put it together and make the manual so as we are doing this during this pandemic we also have the opportunity to do business of waste management because we do we we make manual through that waste so people are setting those manual to the farmers to even to the houses that have gardens that have flowers that have gardens for the weddings they buy us we have a company that called Four Seasons we have a contract with them they came to us as Federation to make an agreement so that they can buy from us so we have different in different cities that we are doing this and we are making a lot of money and also in our groups we have money to save in our savings in Federation that is what we are doing correct the waste from homes and make manual thank you thank you very much Modesta Sarah and Teresa any additional comments Arianna I can't really see the rest of the forum Swati has her hand up and then and Teresa and Jagannatha also also do so maybe so maybe we could start with Teresa then we move on to Swati and the last person you mentioned I for some reason I can't see people's ends so over to you Teresa and we just have six minutes before we hello can you hear me yes we can yeah yeah another question what is required of the communities and other stakeholders in order to replicate and scale up this work actually we have shown as a network as the eye and the affiliates in different countries have in more than two decades have shown a proof of concept of how can a community of an urban poor can make a difference and be part of the solution but actually the limitations really is that the the resources is limited in the hands of the poor so that's why even though we have good partnerships we have meaningful partnerships with government with academia with other stakeholders the magnitude of the problem and the the the changing environment the mental hazard you know mental hazard situation that our communities are in right now really requires investment from the government and from other sectors so that these initiatives that are shown here can be replicated and can be scaled up in a more sustainable and more effective manner I think that's one sorry Teresa we we have four minutes and we want to to thank you thank you very much Swati a minute hi hi Beth hi Ariana hi everybody else so I'm Swati I have been working with SDI for the last two years so I know this group very well thank you so much for the great presentation I actually have a question for Teresa because we work a lot in Africa and South Asia but not too much in East Asia during COVID and so Teresa I really wanted to understand you know this amazing sort of innovation that was triggered by COVID you know including urban agriculture to tackle the food insecurity and and to you know deal with the crisis response did it change did it bring about any change you know in terms of your relationship with the city you know in terms of the institutional arrangement that you had with the city you know now that they are aware that you you know the federation was instrumental in pandemic response have you seen more uptick in terms of you know collecting this community level data and including you know collecting data on climate and and that's something I want to understand you know because it's not so standardized across all the cities that you know did you do you collect right now in your profiling as part you know data on climate impacts as well as traditional knowledge which is part of the LLA right we need to look at how people have been coping or adapting and is that included so over to you Teresa okay thank you maybe before Teresa comes through can we have also I don't know if it's a question then Teresa can just respond okay thank you thanks Beth I'll take only 30 seconds you see my questions already are put in the chat box I have only one observation see thinking out of box is necessary I want to just respond what is the use of collective data no way you have to get into people to define the action for example I heard that there's no resource there is no financial support I have a hundred kg of wet waste in 40 days gets you 30 kg of compost each kg of compost is worth money segregate wasted source money is there so this out of box thinking is required data data data for what I don't understand see what we have to do to do little out of box thinking so in summary I want to tell these initiatives are wonderful but allow people allow community to decide what they want not we trained in a particular way you know we have a mindset let us be mindful by allowing the community to decide what they want thank you very much Beth and all the participants this was a nice experience thank you very much so Teresa offered to you to respond to to Swati's question as well as maybe also your point of view on Jakanaka's inputs yeah okay so regarding Swati's question um yeah it opened a lot of opportunities actually it highlighted the needs and it highlighted the needs of the urban poor and also highlighted how the urban poor is being impacted by all this issues around and how the COVID exacerbated this issues of the urban poor so um actually right now we have we have different cities where a city government contacted the federation to to organize all the urban gardeners 300 groups of gardeners that is organized by the city but they want these gardeners to know to understand how the federation is using the saving scheme uh to tackle other issues of poverty so you see I think uh this is uh COVID I think it's a double graded Zordia it it it uh you know it brought about a lot of problem but it also opened up a lot of opportunities for the urban poor to strengthen their relationship with the government so that's one um with the question of um with the with the comment of Jakanaka regarding the the data actually data yeah of course it is a neutral thing it is it can be used by the you know uh the community cannot use it if they don't they are not empowered to use it I think uh data a level of organizing is a tool that is so powerful that can be about change because we use data to negotiate we use data to leverage we use these data to plan uh how to tackle our issues deciding what to do and you know uh um uh giving us a more uh a deep understanding of how to do it and what are the limitations in the in in our resources of course so yeah it it opens a lot of uh you know it opens a lot of solution but yeah you are correct that if data alone it's it it doesn't change anything in the settlement yeah thank you thank you very much Teresa and um if we were able to clip we'll clip for all our presenters and our responders and of course uh you uh our audience are for a very uh invigorating and insightful conversation we apologize for cutting people short and for not having an opportunity to take all your questions and your intervention uh there is a request uh in uh in the chat box uh around sharing of some of the presentations I I we can definitely do that if people can put their their contact email addresses in the chat and we can follow up I think also I'm I'm correct Ariana isn't in that this will these these are also going to be uh published uh these uh sessions are going to be published uh either on the IID website or uh perhaps on on YouTube uh so they might be an opportunity yeah um and for me just to say thank you for for for taking your time we uh kind of like ran over a bit but I'm glad that we managed to catch everyone and everyone got an opportunity to to say something so I have a fruitful rest of the conference uh in from us from STI in Cities Alliance thank you very much goodbye everyone