COMMUNITIES, CAPACITIES AND DISASTERS AS OPPORTUNITIES

 

I spent several years working for an organization called Swayam Shikshan Prayog in India, whose experiences with mobilizing communities and building their capacities to enable them to access resources and services, provides a useful example of how NGOs can design capacity building strategies strategically. SSP currently works with more than 800 women’s self-help groups across a thousand villages in Maharashtra and Gujarat, two states in western India[1].  The ideas and experiences I discuss here demonstrate a capacity building strategy that transforms post-disaster processes into strategic opportunities for communities.

 

Practising a different kind of capacity building

Swayam Shikshan Prayog literally translated means “learning from experience” As adults, we learn to negotiate the environments we inhabit primarily through our experiences. Those experiences we learn most from are our own. When we have no experience in solving particular kinds of problems, common-sense logic leads us to seek out the experiences of others like ourselves – our peers. For example, if we want to know where to buy the best vegetables, how to get our phone bills paid, how to install a telephone line or where to buy medicines we would either depend on our own experience or find out from neighbors and friends how to do it.

As professionals we readily admit that our most powerful learning experiences come from such trial-and-error, yet experiential learning is frequently dismissed and most organized learning events that take place in development organizations are in the form of “training programs” in which trainers, often professionals - teach communities what to do. In its worst form such training represents Paulo Freire’s “banking concept of education” in which the teacher is seen as bestowing the gift of knowledge upon ignorant students.

 

As professionals it is invariably difficult for us to give up our monopoly on knowledge. Knowledge is power and to share it would dramatically alter the ways in which we relate to people around us. But if we are interested in capacity building processes in which people are empowered to set there own agendas then we need to look very carefully at where knowledge and capacity are lodged and the extent to which poor communities can acquire and use information strategically.

 

Giving communities control over information and enabling them to produce, disseminate and use information are one of the crucial ways in which SSP is empowering community based organizations. The work of the staff is to supervise, provide information, help to plan activities and open up institutional spaces for community participation and dialogue with institutions. But at every stage the organization strives to ensure that innovations are transferred through a network of community based organizations rather than through the NGO. When messages are transmitted by peers the likelihood of such messages turning into concrete action is far greater than when such messages are transmitted through professionals and staff members. SSP has developed a range of learning forums such as information fairs, demonstration or pilot projects and study  tours in which women come face to face with other women, visit each other’s villages and see for themselves what their peers have accomplished .  

 

Disasters as strategic opportunities

SSP’s intervention in the post-earthquake reconstruction process in Maharashtra and later in Gujarat demonstrates the way in which SSP has used peer learning strategies to advance the interests of women’s groups in approximately one thousand villages in India.

 

Disasters are synonymous with death and destruction. For the poor who live precariously balanced lives where the smallest crisis can destroy lives, homes and livelihoods, disasters are all the more devastating. But there is another way of looking at disasters. The massive influx of resources and the political attention that come in the wake of disasters bring to these ‘forgotten’ communities unprecedented opportunities to rebuild communities, institutions and living environments in ways that can reconfigure the relationships among women, communities and state institutions.

 

After the earthquake in Latur and Osmanabad districts of Maharashtra 1993, the Government of Maharashtra launched a recovery program supported by the World Bank. In the 1300 villages where houses had been partially damaged, the government used a self-help approach. This meant that the government would provide technical inputs through junior engineers, monetary compensation and materials through government regulated depots while houseowners were expected to organize the purchase and transport of materials and the labour for the actual construction.  SSP was asked to be Community Participation Consultant to the Government of Maharashtra in order to facilitate the repairing and strengthening process in these villages. As an organization committed to the empowerment of women, SSP was used its position as consultant to the government  as an opportunity  to invest in building capacities of women and to create mechanisms for dialogue between women’s groups and state officials. Such investments in enhancing women’s capacities were seen as a means not only to increase community participation in the reconstruction programme but also as a means to enhancing women’s capacities to organize themselves around development priorities of their communities.

 

Putting information in the hands of women’s groups

After running a mass information campaign on earthquake safe construction and on the state entitlements for houseowners, SSP essentially used its  position as consultant to the government to open up spaces for women’s participation in this program. SSP was able to negotiate with the government support for the Samvaad Sahayak or Community Assistants Programme. This unique program enabled women’s groups to nominate members who would then be paid by the government to act as intermediaries between communities and the state. Samvaad Sahayaks were provided with two sets of skills: they were trained to recognize earthquake-safe features in house construction and they were provided with information on government entitlements. Every six months a new set of women were hired and trained for this job, thus expanding the capacities of several rather than a single woman from the collective.

The Samvaad Sahayaks went door-to-door providing residents in the village with information on the government’s recovery programme, took feedback to the government and monitored the actual house construction process. Often construction could not proceed because of water shortages or the unavailability of construction materials. In regular feedback meetings with officials, would not only keep officials informed of these realities but work with officials to find solutions to the problems. 

 

Reconfiguring relationships with the state

This significantly increased involvement of communities in the construction. Middlemen and corrupt engineers were exposed. But more importantly the programme brought hundreds of women out of their homes and into the public sphere. These women who were members of somewhat dormant women’s collectives wanted to pursue their public, developmental roles. Their participation in this post-disaster recovery program was already changing the way in the government viewed them. They were no longer just beneficiaries waiting for hand-outs. Instead they were partnering with the government to ensure that government resources were being effectively utilized by their communities.

 

Once mobilized through the post-earthquake reconstruction processes, women have been involved in a host of development issues. Women’s groups have worked with the district administration to improve access to rations, water, sanitation, primary healthcare, schools.

 

 

Women’s information centres: Learning Construction 

One of the issues that women were interested in was finding a space for themselves. Women often found that they did not have access to a public space to hold their meetings.  The women’s information centres were seen as a multipurpose activity centre that would also provide the women with greater visibility and higher status. The first women’s information centre was constructed by the women’s collective in Usturi. Women leaders traveled to a city called Pune to learn from other women how to make concrete beams and soil cement blocks. SSP provided construction training and some funds while it was the women’s responsibility to raise funds from the community, get the land for the centre and provide the labour. The women were not only involved in laying the bricks and mixing the mortar but also in supervising and managing the construction. They learned to keep inventories of the materials, recorded the labour costs, recorded cash and material contributions from the communities and maintained accounts. During the construction process, women from neighbouring villages would visit the Usturi construction site everyday  to see for themselves how the Usturi women were constructing their centre. Those who came received on-site training, working on the construction site all day. At the end of the day the Usturi women would inspect the structure to make sure that the “trainees” work did not compromise the quality of the construction. The visitors were all inspired by what they saw in Usturi and many began to mobilize resources and support in their own villages to get their own centres. Today there are thirty such centres across the two districts of Latur and Osmanabad districts[2].

 

Transferring innovations to Gujarat

After the earthquake in January 2001, members of women’s groups in Latur and Osmanabad districts have been traveling to Gujarat every six weeks to share their post-disaster experiences and assist women in Gujarat to access their entitlements, learn construction and form savings and credit groups. Women from Gujarat have also visited Latur and Osmanabad villages to see for themselves the work that women have done in Maharashtra.

 

 

One of the key messages that experienced women’s groups from Maharashtra brought to the women of Gujarat was that savings and credit groups have been crucial to their organizing work. However as a recent report from SSP states, “ Women initially resisted the idea of forming groups. They would say that they were uneducated  and wouldn’t know how to handle a group or its money. In some villages women said that the men would not allow them to be part of such groups. However after repeated visits, meetings and study tours of SCGs and women’s groups women began to realize the power of savings and credit groups. By January 2002 there were over 50 SCGs in Maliya, Rapar and Jodia Talukas”[4].

 

 

Transferring construction to the women of Gujarat

Encouraged by the women from Latur and Osmanabad, who have constructed 30  community centres, women’s collectives in Gujarat are also trying to build their own centres. For example, the women of Versara village in Gujarat  decided to come together to build their own centre. For the first time they attended village meetings where they began to make requests for a piece of land. Rajuba recalled how they got the land.

“ We went to the sarpanch[6]  of our village and told him that we wanted a plot for a community centre. He said that he would give us a piece of land but it was well outside the village. We demanded that he find us land in the middle of the village. Then he said he would give us his own land in the village, but on the condition that his wife and sister-in –law were given leadership of the women’s group. We rejected his offer immediately and identified an abandoned plot in the village which we could use. Finally our persistence paid off and he eventually gave us our land.”[7] 

 

In spite of the social barriers that most women in Gujarat face, in many villages women are seen sifting sand, mixing cement, ensuring the right proportions of sand and cement and supervising the masons to make sure that they are incorporating earthquake safe features in the construction. The on-site learning of construction skills has transformed the way in which women see themselves. Jasuben of Khirsara, Rajkot says, “We are learning so much by being involved in this construction process. Tomorrow, I there was no NGO and we needed to build a women’s centre, I believe that twenty of us could do it on our own.” 

 

The women from Maharashtra have also enabled women leaders in Gujarat to take on the roles of  community facilitators similar to the communication assistants in Maharashtra.

 

 

Peer exchange between Turkish and Indian women

Further west in Turkey, following the Marmara Earthquake in 1999, the Foundation for the Support of Women’s Work has been committed to ensuring that the post-earthquake reconstruction process responds to women’s needs. Immediately after the earthquake while living in tents the women began to get together and talk to the authorities on the fact that they needed better food and better sanitary conditions. Once they moved to the pre-fabricated temporary housing settlements women began to come together at the women and children’s centres that were set up by FSWW in partnership with community women. These centres were not only a space for pre-school education for children but also a place where women could come together to organize around their livelihoods and infrastructure needs.

 

In February 2002, a team of six women from Turkey, comprising both NGO staff and women community leaders, visited post-earthquake initiatives in India[8] to exchange lessons arising from their experiences. These women had the opportunity to witness women’s initiatives not only in Gujarat a year after the earthquake, but also in Maharashtra, where they were witness to what women’s collectives who organized to work on post-earthquake reconstruction have been able to accomplish in the course of nine years.

 

 

Women shared the strategies that they had undertaken collectively to address questions of housing, water supply, health and livelihoods. Whether in India or in Turkey, the women recognized that as individuals they could rarely influence the reconstruction and planning processes. Whereas once organized into groups they were able to monitor engineers, demand information about state programs about safe housing and negotiate with state officials.

 

For example, Sevgi from Duzce explained how the women in her community had surveyed 1200 households in the prefabricated settlements to identify homeowners and tenants and to find out the extent to which their homes were damaged. The women prepared a questionnaire and went door to door meeting families. During this survey process more families found out about the women and children’s centres and began to use them. After collating the responses from the questionnaire the women created a map of the settlements showing the large numbers of tenants whose homes were damaged in the earthquake but were not entitled to new permanent houses as these were only for home owners. The women’s survey showed that the government’s estimate of people requiring permanent housing was thirty percent lower. The women then used this survey to begin a dialogue with the government. Women also organized a signature campaign to address the severe water shortage in the prefabricated settlements in Duzce. After presenting their petition to the local authorities, women requested officials to visit their centre have a discussion with the women.

 

Conclusion
Government interventions in post disaster reconstruction processes tend to be characterized by highly centralized decision making, high investments in technology and an approach that attempts to replace lost resources rather than enhance the resource and capacity base of communities.  If post-disaster programs are to address the long term interests of communities, then they must address find ways to reduce vulnerabilities of communities. The work of women’s collectives in India and Turkey demonstrate that building women’s capacities through the formation of savings and credit groups, building skills in construction, providing spaces where women can organize themselves and opening up opportunities for dialogue with government institutions can move women from a disaster focus to a development one. By building women’s capacities and helping to access resources, services and decision making spaces for their communities, women are in fact addressing their development priorities while simultaneously enhancing their abilities to cope with disasters.