The Alternative Service Delivery Project (ASDU) is working with different informal settlements to improve their access to basic services. In so doing, the ASDU hopes to ensure that all stakeholders in a city transition from merely surviving, are able to adapt in the face of acute shock events, and thrive despite enduring chronic stresses.
The ASDU worked with community leaders in Freedom Farm and Malawi Camp, informal settlements on Robert Sobukwe Road in Cape Town, to facilitate asset-based development – modern community participation. Key to this work was recognition for the fact that each community is different and an approach to participation must be an adaptable multistep process of participation, mobilisation and enumeration. This helps to ensure the best, most context appropriate, outcome is reached.
This process has been challenging but equally rewarding and enlightening and, as such, GreenCape has written a report, with support from the City of Cape Town’s Resilience Directorate, which seeks to unpack some of the key learnings of the process. The report is titled “Co-designing resilient urban communities: The power
of human capital in inclusive public engagement”.
The report discusses:
- The concepts of community engagement and successful facilitation of asset-based community participation and co-design;
- The role of project drivers in effective community engagement;
- A case study of ASDU and participatory co-design in action in the aforementioned informal settlements in Cape Town; and
- Human Capital – Core values, capabilities, strengths and weaknesses in project drivers in creating meaningful community involvement in building and institutionalizing resilience
Read the full report here.