Review of Urban Poor Fund International

Slum/Shack Dwellers International (SDI) is a confederation of country-level federations of the urban poor from 33 countries of the Global South. It was launched in 1996 and became a formally registered entity in 1999. Its mission is to link poor urban communities from cities across the South to transfer and adapt successful mobilisation, advocacy and problem solving strategies they develop in one location to other cities, countries and regions. After an inception period of 6 years in which SDI operated small capital funds through support from bilateral donors and foundations, SDI formally established in October 2007 a financing facility called the Urban Poor Fund International (UPFI). UPFI is a self-governed, self-managed, ongoing and expanding financial facility that provides capital to member national urban poor funds, managed by members of SDI. Since its start in 2007, UPFI has been supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Norwegian Government and by Sida (Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency).

Objectives

The objective of the project was to review UPFI with regard to the degree to which it was achieving its objectives, the way it was operating, relationships to its supporters, its effectiveness, and the relevance of the underlying assumptions for creating UPFI.

Geographical spread

The Philippines, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa

Key areas/components

• Assessment of capacities of the national and city-level federations of the urban poor:
1. to mobilise communities and enhance their participation
2. to leverage resources from public and private sector sources, including access to land and affordable finance
3. to promote pro-poor regulations and policies and participate in the design of these frameworks, and
4. to undertake innovative programmes/projects setting precedents for the transformation of regulatory and policy frameworks
• The assessment was made through filed visits in five countries, interviews with a range of stakeholders including leadership from the communities, federation members, key officials of the local and national governments, financing institutions, academicians and various donors
• Discussions with the SDI secretariat and leadership
• Review of secondary documents like project proposals, management reports, progress reports, other evaluation reports, etc.

Key outputs

• Five feedback sessions were organised after the field visits in the respective countries to share the preliminary findings
• Five country review reports (The Philippines, Uganda, Malawi, Zimbabwe and South Africa)
• One final report addressing the key evaluation questions and recommendations for improvement and areas that required the attention of the management
• One sharing workshop involving the key decision makers and leadership of SDI

Year/period

August to December 2011

Client

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, USA