Volume Three of the six-volume series explores community experiences of rebuilding and upgrading their homes and communities following typhoon Yolanda.
The series is jointly published by the UN-Habitat and the Social Housing Finance Corporation (SHFC) in their effort to encapsulate the community and household partners’ experience with the People’s Process during their Post‐Yolanda Support for Safer Homes and Settlements project.
Introduction
Among the marginalized communities engaged by the Post-Yolanda Support for Safer Homes and Settlements project were overcrowded colonies of informal settlers. Poverty, unemployment, and lack of access to basic services and opportunities typify these neighborhoods.
At Welcome Village, Barangay Tabucin the Capiz town of Pontevedra, the original residents were seasonal workers and migrants from as far as Luzon, lured by the then lucrative fish farm industry in nearby Roxas City. Inhabitants of out-of-the-way island barangays (island districts/villages) were drawn to the edge of land that became Belle Village 1 Extension, also in Pontevedra, but in the swath of mangroves and marshlands just before the Panay River reaches the sea. Fishers elbowed each other for a roof over their heads in the neighborhood known as SUMaMa, an acronym for Samahang Urban ng Maralitang Mamamayan (Association of Urban Poor Citizens), in the contiguous districts of Villaluna, Sto. Niño, and Plantanians in Zone 1, Barangay Poblacion at the thriving fish port of Estancia in Iloilo province.
The people in these communities lived in squalor in flimsy patched up dwellings that were vulnerable to natural and man-made calamities. When Yolanda struck, many of these informal settlers were rendered homeless. But because they had the prescience to enroll their communities in the Community Mortgage Program (CMP) of the Social Housing Finance Corporation, which afforded them affordable financing so they could secure tenure on the land they occupied, they were considered eligible for permanent housing assistance under the Post-Yolanda shelter project.
From slums, these communities have proven themselves champions of the People’s Process, facilitating their transformation into more active communities. Over a year after the world’s strongest typhoon, Philippine slums rise from the rubble—but not as they were.
About the series
This publication series is an avenue to share the fruits of practicing People’s Process as it promotes strong relationships within the community and various bodies in the project, transforms communities even up until the household level, develops trust through a transparent financial mechanism, lays the groundwork for resilience and sustainability, and creates community leaders.
Through the stories of the people in this publication series, it is our hope that local governments, communities, and other stakeholders realize the viability and value of the People’s Process as an empowering principle and sustainable method of recovery and community development in their own localities or contexts.
Download here: People’s Process in Shelter Recovery: Rising from the Slums
Publication type: Project report
Date published: December 2015
Or download the full 6-volume series here.
