By Howaida Kamel, Cairo Community Manager
I managed to drive across Kasr el Nile bridge at 8:30am to find people already on the streets, cleaning up after four days of protests. I passed the Constitutional Court, where police forces had secured the area so that Judge Adly Mansour, the new interim President, could take his oath. What became publicized rather quickly was the coincidence that Judge Mansour was appointed the Head of the Constitutional Court on June 30, after his predecessor’s term had ended. While some suspect that this might be foul play, he has served on the Constitutional Court since 1992 and has held the position of Vice-President until appointed as the leader by former President Mohamed Morsi.
At 11am, Judge Adly Mansour was sworn in as the sixth President of the Arab Republic of Egypt. His address to the nation afterward was inspiring, commending the Egyptian people for their strength, the army for its dedication, the leaders of the political opposition for their role in the democratic process, and all other members of Egyptian society that played a significant role in the events of the last few days. He spoke eloquently about his role as President during this interim period and the steps that must be taken to ensure new elections that will satisfy the needs of the country and its people.
On the streets today, Egyptians are happy that the Muslim Brotherhood has been ousted, and that they were ousted by the people. There is satisfaction that SCAF has not taken control of the country itself once again, and people agree that the appointment of President Mansour was a smart political move. Local media has already picked up on the fact that he did not once use the word “legitimacy” in his speech, unlike the last Presidential speech from Morsi, which included it 74 times.
Egyptians now feel change. We know what we have accomplished is huge, but we also know that there is still a long way to go. There is a new energy in the country that has been powered by the people’s determination to make Egypt a place for all of us. Jokes have come out that we are experts on removing regimes but absolutely terrible at creating them. Let’s just hope this new energy will give Egypt the extra push it needs to get it right this time.
Notes from Tahrir: June 30th
Notes from Tahrir: July 1st
Notes from Tahrir: July 2nd
Notes from Tahrir: July 3rd
Notes from Tahrir: July 4th
Catalina Gomez replied on Wed, 07/17/2013 – 11:25 Permalink
Micro-finance — the provision of credit and other financial services to micro-entrepreneurs and small businesses that lack access to mainstream banking — has proven to be a remarkably effective way to reduce poverty in cities across the developing world. The principle is simple: through access to credit and related resources, the urban poor are empowered to pull themselves out of poverty. Still, as with all matters of finance and investment, the details matter — especially since the goals of justice and financial inclusion have been so elusive in the past. Read on to learn about micro-finance solutions from Dhaka, Mumbai, Cairo, São Paulo, and Bogotá, and then join the discussion below.
The Grameen Bank’s loan system is divided into several steps. The first step is to encourage the poor to believe that they can succeed as an entrepreneur. The poor attend a training program, and then draft a credit proposal. Only then do the beneficiaries receive the funds for investment. The rest of the process includes fund collection, returns, operations, and credit cost.
While the city is full of formal financial institutions, Shaila is one of millions of urban poor who lack the collateral or documentation to access bank loans. In an effort to fill this gap, Veena Mankar launched Swadhaar as an NGO in 2005 to bring the same microcredit services to urban areas that were taking off in rural India. The pioneering organization became Swadhaar FinServe Pvt. Ltd. in 2008. Swadhaar’s clients are nearly all engaged in Mumbai’s large informal economy, running micro-businesses such as food stalls, small general stores, and tailoring services.
The Cairo Economic Livelihoods Program (CELP) is one example of a successful microfinance organization that serves Cairo’s poor. A joint effort between the Aga Khan Foundation and the Canadian International Development Agency, CELP concentrates its efforts on the residents of Darb el Ahmar, a district characterized by its poverty, as well as its production of oriental crafts like wood inlaying and tent making. CELP provides microcredit for local residents to develop their crafts, and also provides employability services.
By creating these market linkages and providing business development services in addition to microcredit, FMF has contributed to Cairo’s inclusive growth, providing the poor of Darb el Ahmar with a new source of income. Furthermore, CELP runs its own economic program that coordinates both the vocational training programs and job counseling and placement unit. Vocational trainings are designed to teach the skills needed develop a small business, such as carpentry, plumbing and electrical maintenance. The career center offers advice, and connects residents to jobs based on their skills. To date, CELP has ensured new employment opportunities for over 350 individuals, 40 percent of which are women.
Tendo em conta esta situação e para facilitar maior aceso ao crédito dos novos empreendedores, especialmente aqueles de baixa renda, em 2001 foi estabelecido São Paulo Confia, uma instituição sem fins lucrativos, que foi criada por entidades da sociedade civil e atualmente conta com apoio financeiro e gerencial da Prefeitura. Nos últimos dois anos, a instituição atendeu mais de 20 mil microempreendedores.
A música “Happy” e seu clipe, do cantor Pharrell William, provocaram um movimento mundial nas ruas de diversas cidades de todos os continentes. O clipe que mostra Pharrell, amigos e pessoas comuns dançando e felizes nas ruas de L.A., inspirou diversas versões de diferentes cidades. No Brasil não foi diferente, e algumas prefeituras aproveitaram para criar suas próprias versões, como aconteceu em Porto Alegre e Curitiba. Leia mais.
O Brasil está vivendo um delicado momento com o aumento da violência e com uma sensação generalizada de falta de segurança. Manchetes se repetem em todo o país – roubos, assassinatos, violência no trânsito. Se por um lado, temos um Governo ineficiente sem a força necessária para combater essa insegurança; por outro, vemos uma sociedade impaciente e começando a fazer “justiça com as próprias mãos”. Leia mais.
Ano passado, o mundo viu uma transformação no Brasil com os jovens indo às ruas pedindo por novas medidas para as questões de mobilidade no país. Após uma violenta resposta policial nos primeiros dias de manifestações, a causa ganhou mais força em todo o país. A frase “Não é pelos 20 centavos” ficou famosa e foi usada para representar angústia e desejo dos jovens por novas soluções — mais sustentáveis e sociais (em mobilidade, na política, na econômica, etc). As reivindicações eram muito mais profundas do que o aumento de 20 centavos da passagem. As manifestações, porém, aconteceram há mais de 6 meses e o que mudou no Brasil — principalmente no que se refere a mobilidade? Leia mais.
Na competição por água no Rio de Janeiro as zonas Norte e Oeste — mais carentes que a famosa Zona Sul — estão claramente perdendo. A cidade enfrenta um dos verões mais quentes dos últimos tempos e alguns bairros tiveram seu fornecimento de água intermitente por semanas nesse Janeiro, devido em parte à falta de reservatórios em larga escala e à manutenção incipiente na rede de fornecimento. Leia mais o discutir.
Os “Nem-Nem” são jovens entre 15 e 24 anos que nem estudam, nem trabalham, nem procuram emprego. Segundo dados do último censo, Brasil tem mais de 5 milhões de “Nem- Nem” no seu território, com grande concentração nas áreas urbanas. Rio atualmente tem mais de 150 mil “Nem-Nem”; preocupa que aquela população cresceu em 30 mil entre 2000 e 2010. Quais são as causas deste fenômeno? E quais são as respostas da cidade para enfrentar aquela situação? Leia mais o discutir.
Rio de Janeiro está avançando na expansão efetiva da titulação de terras e beneficiando a sua população mais vulnerável. Esta direção positiva é o resultado da implementação do programa habitacional Minha Casa Minha Vida e do programa de melhoramento de bairros Morar Carioca Leia mais o discutir.
É assim que Luiz Henrique do Nascimento define as favelas. Ele é o coordenador do Observatório de Favelas e da Escola Popular de Comunicação Crítica, iniciativas cariocas que querem mudar o paradigma dos jovens das favelas brasileiras: de pobres e violentos para potentes e criativos. Leia mais.
Segundo Rio Como Vamos, a insatisfação dos cariocas com a mobilidade e o transporte público da cidade vem crescendo nos últimos anos. A mais recente pesquisa da Rio Como Vamos foi feita em 2013 previamente aos protestos de Junho. Para compreender aquela insatisfação coletiva é importante conhecer melhor as condições do sistema de transporte público da cidade para identificar suas fraquezas e potenciais soluções. Leia mais o discutir.
Last week, the New Cities Foundation’s Executive Director, Mathieu Lefevre, wrote an article for Ashoka’s Next Billion on the results of the Foundation’s E-health project in Rio de Janeiro. The project was the first major study looking at the impact of integrating e-health technology in low-resource, densely populated, urban settings. The New Cities Foundation is currently looking to dramatically extend the project with the city of Rio to cover most of the city’s favelas. Read more.
Wura replied on Wed, 07/17/2013 – 14:04 Permalink
Migration has often been identified as a central component of urbanisation, and with the rise of a ‘mobility’ paradigm, whereby movement is recognised as a rising necessity, the focus is on why people move and the nature of such movement. Novel innovations now enable our speed of movement, while services and infrastructure continues to build networks between spaces, people, and opportunities. However, in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa the question has been raised on what happens when urban agglomerations hosting migrants fail to secure livelihoods (see Bryceson, 2011)? Research in migration showcases the articulation of circular patterns of movement, rising rates of return, and greater insecurities in whether goals are achieved. Such raises an additional question – to what extent are those using, adopting, and experiencing, migration becoming stuck within such a mobility paradigm? Further, what do migrants do to get them out of this trap and achieve aspirations? Read more.
Data has emerged showcasing the latest trends of our demographic shift – the global population now articulates a ‘youth bulge’. The UN-Population Demographic Profile (2010) show children, and ‘youths’, comprise 1.6bn, and 1.0bn, of the population in less-developed regions. The population is younger; and Sub-Saharan Africa is no exception. Attention is now turning to youths: what young people do, what opportunities they initiate for their families and nations, and what it means to be ‘young’ in the developing world. However, an important caveat requires recognition: the focus has been particularly male-focused. Our understanding of girls, within both public and private spaces, remains limited. Such is the debate in this blog post – if we are now looking at ‘kids’ in the city and development, what are the experiences of girls? What can we learn about the city through an engendered perspective? Fundamentally, who is responsible to grant equal rights? Two models of intervention are discussed be, each using alternative methods to provide rights for girls. However, each acts to reinforce the need to improve our understandings on ‘being’ a girl. Read more.
On the 12th of December, Kenya celebrated Jamhuri (Independence) Day. The event came at the end of a year that played host to a roller coaster of emotions for all those who have a part of themselves invested in this country. Nairobi’s 2013 was a year that witnessed impressive progress in terms of infrastructure development, but in which the government made no significant progress on providing services to the city’s numerous slum dwellers. It was a year in which Nairobians came together in great shows of unity, but also saw neighborhoods turn against each other; a year of victories and pride, but also one of great loss and shame. 2013 was the year in which it became clear to what extent corruption puts everyone’s security at risk and the year that the term “Silicon savannah” began to gain serious traction in the business world. Read more or join the discussion.
Within development studies a shift has been identified. An increasing sense of consciousness has emerged on whose ideas are being used to theorise development practice, whether they are applicable, and offer effective solutions. The post-development school of thought is centred on deconstructing ‘universal’ ideas of development. Novel viewpoints have emerged which are transforming how the ‘developing’ world is understood and what role citizens of the Global South can play. With post-development thought, urban researchers, and planners, are advancing new thinking to plan inclusive cities in the Global South. In a succeeding event on urbanisation at the African Research Institute, the subject matter was how urban planning in Africa is adapting for the future. Read more.
The September 2013 Westgate crisis was the most recent in a slew of attacks that have rocked Kenya since it began military operations in Somalia two years ago. The blame for this and previous attacks has generally been pinned on the Islamist group Al Shabaab, who claim to be retaliating against what for them is an unjust invasion and occupation of their country. While Eastleigh, a neighborhood in the east of Nairobi that houses most of the city’s Somali immigrants, has borne the brunt of most of these attacks, residents have also experienced a rise in hostility from local Kenyans and harassment at the hands of the police. Read more or join the discussion.
With urbanisation becoming a rising topic on the research agenda it is interesting to see how new models for urban planning, and laws, are being constructed. Recently, an event by the African Research Institute raised such ideas. The speakers introduced how the contextual diversity across Africa required exploration, and consultants need to focus on adapting a checklist of rule making, rather than make the rules, in planning Africa’s emerging cities. Current African cities were presented as ‘un-planned’, or in need of a re-visioned approach to become inclusive and equitable. Urban planning was the solution — a means of enabling tax reform, effective management, and equal rights to the city. However, urban planning law needed to be re-written to work for ‘African cities’. Read more.
In September this year the Kenyan government launched the Uwezo Fund, a 6 billion Ksh. cash reserve (approximately $70 million) aimed at channeling financial resources into the hands of youth and women. Money for the fund was obtained from capital set aside by the Jubilee Coalition during this year’s election campaign, for use in the case of a run-off. The Jubilee Coalition, led by Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy Samuel Ruto, pledged that any money that was not spent on the campaign would be channeled into a fund of this sort. Six months after winning the election, they stood by their commitment and announced that the application process for accessing interest-free loans was now open to registered youth and women’s groups. Read more or join the discussion.
In Kenyan communities that have little of the collateral needed to access credit, a common approach is to set up savings and investment associations known as “Chamas.” A Chama is an informal group, often composed of women, that follows a system by which everyone contributes money on a regular basis and in turn gets disbursed a fixed amount. The method evolved from the tradition of rural women grouping together and pooling their labor to work on each other’s farms. Read more or join the discussion.
After four months researching malnutrition among young children in the slums of Mumbai, Dasra, a leading strategic philanthropic organization in India, concluded that child malnutrition in Mumbai’s informal settlements is, at its core, a political and behavioral issue among key stakeholders — specifically, caregivers and public health care providers. The resulting research report focused on children from birth to age three and surveyed 50 organizations working with marginalized communities in Mumbai, including SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action), Mumbai Mobile Creches, and Apnalaya. In part two of a series on child malnutrition in Mumbai, Dasra offers insights into how caregivers’ practices can be changed. Learn more.
After four months researching malnutrition among young children in the slums of Mumbai, Dasra concluded that child malnutrition in Mumbai’s informal settlements is, at its core, a political and behavioral issue among key stakeholders — specifically, caregivers and public health care providers. The resulting research report focused on children from birth to age three and surveyed 50 organizations working with marginalized communities in Mumbai, including SNEHA (Society for Nutrition, Education and Health Action), Mumbai Mobile Creches, and Apnalaya. In part three of a series on child malnutrition in Mumbai, Dasra offers insights into how the public healthcare system can be improved. Learn more.