Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia

  Date: 18-20 March 2016  Students and Community members  The planning studio is a platform that brings the residents of informal settlements and students from the University of Science and Technology (NUST) Town and Regional Planning department, shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia and Gobabis Municipality officials to work together in planning for the settlement; the process gives   the students a practical experience in planning with the community. Happy about collecting data The students and community carried out a situational analysis as part of the studio. The Kanaan C planning studio follows the successful planning and design of the freedom square layout for Gobabis, for 2014-2015. Community, students, lecturer, and a Municipal official held a meeting to introduce the students to the community and have a discussion around the development needs of the community and completed a settlement...

Short update from the community members working on the data collection and entry .   My name is Rosalia Haiduwa, I was born in Gobabis on the 17 th  of June 1997 in freedom square. My parents lived here for 27 years. So I have a little bit of a story to share to the world about Freedom Square how we worked together as one team. The process started with the numbering of houses, giving numbers to structures. After we finished giving numbers, we divided ourselves into groups to start with the enumeration process, walking from house to house to collect information about people living there. So as soon as we were done with the survey, we started doing data entry, putting information that we collected into computers. After doing all the data entry we started verifying the information that we entered in computers to see if they are correct. As we were done , we started with map work. Map work was challenging to people that did not understand. We...

Federation members Reflecting on the profiling and enumeration process : Pictures Okahandja Park Community members drawing settlement Map as part of settlement profile Anastasia Chimwandi , showing federation members on how data is captured online  Meme Ronnie and Meme Wenky on the importance of Mapping with the GPS  Ms Rosalinda Hendricks reflects: “It all started off with information collection amongst ourselves as federation members who are saving, we developed a questionnaire for profiling, collected information in 235 informal settlements, which was published 2009 with the support of the Ministry of Regional Local Government, Housing and Rural Development at that time. We further also carried out enumerations, interviewing each household in different informal settlements so we can use the data to inform the local authority on the affordability of residents in accessing services, and negotiating for buying land.” read the entire post here on the Slum dwell...

The exchange was initiated by Namibia Housing Action Group (NHAG) supporting NGO for the Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia (SDFN), in order to expose municipal officials, the federation members and the NGO itself to upgrading that comes as a result of the enumerations. The municipal officials and community members on the exchange are directly or indirectly exposed to the Community Land Information Program (CLIP) Namibia’s version of the enumeration in their towns. Upgrading as a result of the enumeration has not yet taken place. Cape Town and Stellenbosch was going to provide a great platform for the exchange delegates to learn and influence a change in mind-set and promoting a bottom up approach to planning procedures in their local authorities and influence national government policy in the future. Read more on the SDI BLOG http://www.sdinet.org/blog/2013/04/25/using-enumerations-upgrading-namibia-cape-town-lea/