Phnom Penh Partnership: among local government, community and international participants 

Fifth anniversary of UPDF:

Celebrating five years of active partnership with the city government and with the people

The Urban Poor Development Fund was set up  in March, 1998 as joint venture of the Municipality of Phnom Penh, the Solidarity and Urban Poor Federation (SUPF) and the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR). The idea was to create a revolving fund which would provide affordable credit to poor communities for housing and income generation, through their savings groups and federations, and use the fund to pool efforts in partnership and development. the fund is governed by a "mixed" board (which includes a majority of community leaders, with representative from the Municipality, ACHR, NGOs and others development agencies) and managed by a small support staff, with  as little bureaucracy and as much flexibility as possible.

UPDF's task is to use its small resources of money strategically to make other things happen - it's not just a matter providing micro-credit. Money can be a powerful tool, and if money-and decisions about how money is used-is channeled in ways which bring people in communities together, it can be a potent people's process booster. When poor people see clearly that a fund is available to them, and that is supports what they are doing, it can strengthen their hand in negotiations with the state for land, services and access to other resources, and strengthen their capacity to manage their own development process.

It's hard to imagine a more difficult context than the one in which UPDF operates. Decades  of war, political upheaval and unspeakable hardship have torn communities apart in Cambodia, scattered people across the country and obliterated their links with  the past. As the country gets back on its feet and money pours into  it's capital city's free-wheeling economy, poor migrants from the provinces are drawn to the city for jobs in the new factories, on the construction sites and in the burgeoning service and tourism sectors. For the poor, Phnom Penh is a city of hope and opportunity, but when it  comes to finding decent, affordable places to live, most have no option but to build shack in the city's  550-odd informal settlements, on open land, and along roadsides , railway tracks, canals and rivers, where conditions are unhealthy and insecure.

Cambodia, unlike its neighbors Thailand and Vietnam, still has no formal support systems for the poor: no housing board, no ministry of housing, no legislative mechanism for regularizing informal settlements, no government programs to provide basic services or to support people's efforts to improve conditions in their settlements. There is no housing finance to any sector-poor or middle class. And  the municipality, which has been overburdened with challenges such as flood control, crime and economic development, has had difficulty responding to the needs of the city's growing poor population. On the other hand, Cambodia has been the target of innumerable international agencies and a great deal of development  aid, which intervenes in virtually every conceivable sector of the country's development and governance. All this foreign aid and expertise has certainly done many good things for Cambodia, but it has left little space for the urban poor to build their organization and to explore their own solutions to the problem they face.

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 (Urban Poor Development Fund in Cambodia, May 2003)

Figure-4. A model of site plan proposed by a group of 7 khan in Phnom Penh.The project proposal include a unit budget construction, total budget of project, how much money should a member of community prepare in the first stage until last stage of construction, and what should the community participate in preparation, design, construction and monitoring and evaluation stages.

Figure-1. A model of proposed housing by a group of 7 khan in Phnom Penh, consists of two stories. The space on the ground floor is for home based economy activity, to generate the household income to help them to pay the installment arranged and managed by community organization.

Figure-2. Housing Loan form UPDF funded for community winning the competition of proposed urban upgrading and/or resettlements. The loans are to utilized improve road-side squatters at  the new site; resettled families evicted from river banks and after fire destroyed houses at the rooftop of apartments.

Figure-3. The Government of Phnom Penh invite 6 groups of international participants to share their experiences in community development. The international group consists of several member of community organization and community leader. Surabaya deliver a group consist of 3 stakeholders from community leader (a leader of Kampong's Foundation and a leader of Kampong's Cooperation (Saving and Revolving Management)), local government (the Department of City Planning), and development consultant (local university (ITS)). A case study of Kampong Improvement Program Comprehensive in Surabaya is one of interesting program that Phnom Penh Government intending to be learned.Please read paper of KIP Comprehensive