Urban Programme: a fair, inclusive and sustainable city - 2017-23 - MDF

General

Over 2 million people in São Paulo live in unsafe and insecure housing in São Paulo. Many of these live in informal settlements or 'favelas' in overcrowded, poorly built dwellings, often located on marginal land, which lack basic infrastructure such as sanitation, street paving, electricity and are located far from jobs, health and education services, where they are risk from eviction, fires, vector-borne disease outbreaks, and increasingly due to climate change, flash-flooding and landslides. This project will improve the living conditions in 32 favelas (area of precarious and insecure housing), home to 14,000 families, in eastern São Paulo (Vila Prudente, Sapopemba, São Mateus, Jardim Iguatemi); by reducing vulnerability to social and environmental risks and engaging leaders in initiatives to regenerate the local environment. This will take place by strengthening the technical and organisational capacity of local grassroots leaders and neighbourhood organisations to: understand and monitor urban housing and environmental policies and budgets, dialogue with local authorities to enable the poorest access to land tenure formalisation, reduce environmental risks, decent housing, sanitation and essential urban services, work effectively with each other and other organisations for common goals, and shape policy-making to encompass local sustainable solutions to urban environmental problems. This will take place through trainings and capacity building of local neighbourhood groups, brokering and accompaniment of dialogue with local authorities, technical support to develop community environmental initiatives and networking with other groups with similar aims.