"It is estimated that working class citizens spend up to 40% of their income commuting to better economic opportunities, but the public transport system has, over time, become unreliable and unsafe. In addition to the cost of transport, the #housing and basic services crisis in #CapeTown is prevalent, with an estimated 204 informal settlements and thousands of backyard shacks predominantly situated in poor black and coloured neighbourhoods located on the periphery of the city, reinforcing apartheid #spatialplanning and increasing fiscal pressures on #localgovernment."

Check out this interesting and informative read by #DAG's Adi Kumar and Ryan Fester, recently published in the Fiscal Futures series on the International Budget Partnership (IBP)’s blog. ... See more

Can the emergence of cross-class and cross-race coalitions frame new forms of citizen participation and improve fiscal transparency and accountability in South Africa’s historically divided metropolitan municipalities? More in our new Fiscal Futures post from Adi Kumar and Ryan Fester of Development Action Group: http://bit.ly/2TCwd0a

cc MURA: Mitchells Plain United Residents Association and People’s Bylaw ... See more

Over the past weekend, we welcomed a new group of community leaders and activists to #DAG’s 2019 series of community-based capacity building and learning programme called the Active Citizens’ Training Programme (ACTP). The ACTP learning programme is designed to strengthen and build civil society stakeholders, community-based organisation (CBO) leaders and change agents’ knowledge, skills and capacity.

This year we started off on an exciting note with a very informative and highly engaging first module for the #ACTP2019 workshop. Our team initiated the training by facilitating a two-day workshop which they conducted using action learning and participatory approaches, aimed at building resilient and active community leaders, starting from within. On the first day, participants were given a safe platform to make their own house rules and share openly about themselves and the various challenges they are facing. They also got the opportunity to engage in various exercises designed for them to get to know each other and their organisations as well as sharing what they expect to get out of the training. On the second and final day of module 1, the facilitators focused more on encouraging participants to explore various ways of community organising and sharing tactics on how to build strategic relationships among themselves as well as effectively contributing to their communities’ developmental processes.

The main issues that were highlighted in the 1st module were that most of the marginalised communities have got no clear understanding of how the government processes work and they do not know who to approach regarding their grievances. As a result, most of the communities are struggling to strengthen and organise themselves to speak with one voice in order to get their concerns heard by the government.

Over the years, as a way of collectively framing strategies and tactics to active citizen participation in Cape Town’s disadvantaged communities, DAG has been holding a series of the Active Citizens’ Training Programme (ACTP) and training sessions which are implemented over four modules, with each module building towards an overall objective of “Re-imagining the City.”

We are excited to be embarking on a skills development and capacity building journey with the #ACTP2019 group! This year, the learning and strengthening of civic action were targeted at capacitating over 25 participants from CBO leaders and other change-makers who are actively leading development in their own communities across Cape Town.

At the heart of our work is strengthening the capacity of civil society organisations, community groups and local civic leaders. As an organisation that advocates for a people-centred #development, DAG believes that meaningful engagement from poor communities is key to framing the pro-poor urban development strategies that could create truly integrated and inclusive neighbourhoods.

Check out the workshop sessions in pictures…#Capacitate #LeadershipDevelopment #CapacityBuilding #ActiveCitizenry ... See more

#ReImaginingMitchellsPlain

MURA's extended exco and DAG met the Executive Mayor of the City, Dan Plato today to talk about a partnership focusing on the three sectors. Safety and Security, Land and Housing and Local Development in Mitchells Plain. We also discussed the proposed summit and other issues. ... See more