Mission and Purpose
The Centre for Community Organisation and Development’s (CCODE) mission is to be “a leading institution in empowering organizations of the poor in Malawi to be socio-economically self-reliant through capacity building initiatives.” (CCODE, 2017) In an interview with Executive Director Sungani Chalemba, Mr. Chalemba emphasized that alleviating urban poverty is also a major focus for the organization. He stated that, “for quite so long in Malawi, one of the challenges we have been having is that the focus has always been on the rural base and neglecting the urban areas. Yet, when we look at the statistics, it shows that Malawi is one of the fastest urbanizing countries.” In fact, the World Bank found that in 2015, Malawi had the 25th highest urban population growth in the world (World Bank). Elaborating, Mr. Chalemba described how, “more and more people, they are moving into the cities. Yet, the government keeps on living in denial and neglects its duty...it is happy to collect the taxes and revenue from the poor people but it doesn’t wish even to provide services.” CCODE’s purpose is to make a difference in the lives of the Malawian poor.
Origins and Development
A Zimbabwean woman named Sikhu Nkhoma founded CCODE in 2003. Prior to creating CCODE, Ms. Nkhoma worked for Dialogue on Shelter, an organization that implemented projects aimed at alleviating urban poverty in Zimbabwe. In Malawi, Ms. Nkhoma observed a void in organizations addressing urban poverty and thus founded the organization.
Organizational Structure and Funding
Executive Director Sungani Chalemba leads CCODE, an organization that has 35 paid staff. CCODE is affiliated with Slum Dwellers International, and thus, according to Mr. Chalemba, “the principles and the thinking that it [CCODE] has been championing is just like a replica of Slum Dwellers.” In addition to Slum Dwellers International, CCODE receives funding from UN Habitat, Tilitonse Fund, and a host of other organizations. However, Mr. Chalemba described that “our funds keep shrinking....I don’t know what is happening, the financing for development keeps shrinking...so there are very little resources that are trickling into countries like Malawi and organizations like ourselves.”
In terms of CCODE’s structured alliance with FRUP, there is currently a coordinators meeting between the top management of CCODE and the national leaders of FRUP once a month. Here, all the issues that have been identified at the regional, district, and zone levels of FRUP are shared between the two organizations.
Specializations and activities
CCODE specializes in capacity-building initiatives for the rural and urban poor of Malawi. In order to achieve this end, CCODE implements various activities such as its ‘slum upgrading project’, which seeks to re-plan informal settlements in urban areas by deepening “poor people’s participation in policy formulation and implementation.” (CCODE, 2017) To-date, over 70 communities throughout Malawi have been involved in this project (Ibid). During slum upgrading processes, issues of water access, sanitation, infrastructure, etc. have been identified by communities as areas in need of urgent improvement. Explaining the reasoning behind this participatory approach, Mr. Chalemba stated that if one were to ask experts about how to re-plan informal settlements, they would likely say “bring bulldozers and demolish everything and we can build these big megacities.” However, Mr. Chalemba is adamantly against this idea, stating, “that will not work. Especially in a poor country like Malawi....you have to move from the top ladder to start thinking about what to do, because like I have said, this country – 85% are poor, so there is no way Malawi should have all its training [and decision making] geared towards the remaining 15%.” Mr. Chalemba stated that, although the government was sceptical at the beginning of this project, they have started to warm up to the concept as they are realizing that by incorporating the poor into these urban planning processes, there are less protests and setbacks.
In order to undertake the above slum upgrading projects, CCODE often implements Community Data for Change (CDfC) projects, which look to empower communities to “generate data about their communities through situational analysis: community profiling, mapping and community-led enumerations.” (CCODE, 2017) These CDfC projects often result in informative maps that can be distributed to government and civil society actors so that they can make more informed public policy decisions.
Major projects and events
CCODE is involved in various different initiatives. In terms of the initiatives that CCODE alone implements, each revolves around the following thematic areas: development of poor people’s organizations, community data for change, basic services and infrastructure, and skills and livelihoods (CCODE, 2017).
Partnership with the Federation for the Rural and Urban Poor
A unique activity of CCODE is its alliance with the Federation of the Rural and Urban Poor (FRUP), a grassroots network with a membership of over 80,000 people in Malawi that trains communities “in fields such as the importance of daily community savings, income generation, and general community development” (CCODE, 2017). Established in 2003 just before CCODE, Mr. Chalemba recounts how FRUP quickly “grew so big, to the point that they could not coordinate it all. So there was need to have professional staff”. It was out of this issue that the alliance was formed, as the membership of FRUP determined that its positive momentum could not be maintained without the administrative, financial, and development guidance/support provided by CCODE.
Analysis and Lessons Learned
CCODE has had numerous achievements since its founding, including securing tenure and decent housing for over 1,000 households, as well as improving sanitation for over 2,500 households (CCODE, 2017).
Publications
All of CCODE’s publications can be found using the following link: http://www.ccodemw.org/publications-resources
See Also
References
CCODE, http://www.ccodemw.org
World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.URB.GROW?end=2015&start=2005&view=chart&year_high_desc=true
Personal Correspondence Between EThan Way and Mr. Chalemba.
External Links
Notes
Lead image: Ccode & Malawi Federation/Facebook, http://bit.ly/2W3vV4w