Resources

This paper documents the Philippines' National Irrigation approaches in organizing farmers to undertake management in the operation and maintenance of irrigation systems. The experience of turnover in this country is particularly unique in that the approach involved employment of farmers, as opposed to professional community organizers, in organizing co-farmers into irrigator associations. The farmers employed were well trained, and positive results were achieved in the following areas: active irrigators' associations at field and distributary levels; reduced operation and maintenance costs; increased fee collection rates; greater equity in water distribution. This case highlights that organizing farmer activities in this way shorten the turnover process, make it less expensive and, most importantly, be effective.

Outlines the process of preparing a village resource management plan in Sri Lanka. The villagers used mapping, seasonal calendars, matrix ranking and chapati diagramming to analyze their situation and identify problems and solutions. The exercise was part of a PRA training programme for civil servants from five government departments, many of whom found it very rewarding and demonstrated a strong commitment to the participatory planning approach.

This newsletter documents innovative and participatory programmes by urban people all over Asia and also in South Africa. It includes articles of slums, land tenure, services, sanitation, housing, micro-finance and more.

This resource kit for trainers has been prepared to help develop facilitators for watershed programes enabling farmers to own and implement their own watershed management plans. Key aspects covered include, facilitating farmers to analyse their current situations, visualise a better future and the steps needed to get there and develop simple yet meaningful indicators to evaluate and monitor their progress along the way.

This issue of the newsletter of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights focuses on how poor people deal with eviction. It contains articles from all over Asia providing examples of how people have responded to eviction or threat of eviction. The articles look at the causes of eviction and ways to prevent it. It has special sections focussing especially on the situation in from India, Philippines, Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Pakistan, Cambodia, South Africa, Japan, and Zimbabwe. Other themes include street vendors and eviction, eviction and law, local law and practice, and backup for communities under threat of evictions. Some of the main features focus on how to prevent eviction with information, alternative planning and collective action, including the examples of the Philippines Homeless People's Federation that survey vulnerable communities living in environmentally dangerous areas and use their information to negotiation resettlement or upgrading options with local governments; the struggle of a coalition of NGOs, community organisations, professionals and civic groups in Karachi, Pakistan, to stop the Lyari Expressway that would cause the city's largest ever evictions of poor communities; and the organisation of footpath dwellers in Mumbai, India, to defend their rights.