Understanding urban livelihoods: project experiences

The research project involved in-depth and detailed review of the poverty impact of different types of interventions, focusing on the mechanisms which may exclude urban dwellers with a low asset base or significant underprivileged groups within communities, eg. women, the elderly, from benefiting from project interventions.

Improved services may lead to increased rents, forcing the poorest out of an area. The research attempted to distinguish between the "poor" and the "destitute" to look for realistic ways of improving the living conditions of the slum dwellers.

Two informal settlements in Dhaka Metropolitan City, and 22 settlements in Faridpur Municipality were studied to find out present situation regarding shelter/housing, civic facilities, vulnerability issues and living conditions of slum dwellers The target group members (poor women and men) of this project were the slum dwellers who are the beneficiaries of partner organizations (NGOs, GOs, CBOs, Networks, Forums, Institutions, etc) - total 2117 (1917 in Faridpur and 200 in Dhaka). Secondary stakeholders were municipal authorities, International funding organization; International, national and local NGOs, researchers, development practitioners, organizations/institutions, local landowners as well as political representatives.

This project was initiated in October 2001 (actual date of project started: January 2003 due to belated clearance by KAR/DFID) and ended on March 2005.

See also Improving Urban Environments , a new project to reduce environmental threats to the health and livelihoods of urban slum dwellers.

This project is part of Practical Action Bangladesh's Access to Infrastructure Services programme.