The use of 'typical families' to explore livelihoods and service provision in urban informal settlements, South Africa
In South Africa a government housing subsidy scheme exists which allows beneficiaries access to a R16 000 grant which is usually 'project-linked'. The South African NGO, Community Agency for Social Enquiry (CASE) was commissioned to monitor the impact of such schemes over four years to feed into policy recommendations. As a part of this project, participatory methodologies were used in four urban settings with three objectives in mind. The first was to test the use of some participatory tools in an urban setting, in particular the 'typical families' tool.