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Home » Focus Areas » Promotion of participatory urban planning, management and governance » Activities » Urban Poverty Reduction Strategy - Colombo
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Partner: Government: Government of the United Kingdom (DfID)
Local Authority: City of Colombo Civil Society: 20 Urban Poor Communities, Sevanatha
International Organization: UN-HABITAT |
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Cost: US$299,000 |
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In recent years, Sri Lanka's capital city Colombo has demonstrated a strong interest and commitment to performance improvement and change. It has focused on making the city administration truly responsive to public needs and aspirations, facilitating the participation of a wide range of stakeholder groups in planning and decision-making. The city has also involved the private sector in the management and provision of urban services. The City of Colombo is, therefore, in an influential position, as an able and willing partner, to guide and assist other smaller cities to promote an integrated cross-sector approach to sustainable urban development. The aim of the project was to facilitate urban poverty reduction in Colombo by developing a participatory and sustainable institutional framework within the municipality that is closely working with the urban poor.
Project implementation was coordinated through Sevanatha, an urban-based NGO, partnering with the Municipal Council. The first task was the preparation of a poverty profile for the city, targeting the hundreds of slums, and through participatory research to define their priority needs. In the spirit of strengthening decentralization, the District Offices then partnered with their urban poor communities to prepare Community Action Plans defining Council as well as community investments, supported by community mobilization techniques. Prioritized investments were then constructed through innovative community contracting methods, further enabling the urban poor as partners in their own development.
By the end of June 2004, the Poverty Profile summarizing the situation in 1,614 unplanned squatter settlements had been completed. Pro-poor strategies based on participatory Community Action Planning approaches and Community Contracting had been tested through community-based infrastructure and service demonstration projects, and formally adopted by the Council for follow-up replication. 20 urban poor communities had benefited from improved urban services in partnership with the District Offices, including utilization of project grant funds integrated with the Council Member's decentralized budget. A Good Practice Catalogue and supporting Toolkit is being finalized to support city-wide and national application of the lessons learned. |
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