This paper brings together the perceptions of three youths from Barrio San Jorge, a low-income settlement located in the municipality of San Fernando in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, and the more technical views of three adult researchers working in the same barrio with the Instituto Internacional de Medio Ambiente y Desarrollo—América Latina (IIED—AL). It highlights youth’s perceptions and aspirations within a context of neighbourhood upgrading and transformation, and discusses some ideas on how best to approach and work with youth, addressing the challenges of integration, participation and commitment.
This paper describes the development of a credit fund programme in informal settlements in Buenos Aires, Argentina, over a 15-year period from 1993 to 2007. It focuses on the creation, implementation and sustainability of credit funds for housing improvement and how these developed and changed in response to both external factors and programme dynamics. It pays particular attention to the programme's most recent phase, in which the management of the funds was decentralized into separate neighbourhood funds in three communities. It explains how each neighbourhood fund is managed, especially the role of the women who administer them. It also analyzes their respective levels of performance and considers prospects and challenges for the future. The authors conclude that credit fund initiatives based on modest fi nancial resources have the potential not only to catalyze housing improvements but also to strengthen community capacity by delegating project management to the grassroots. In this way, when supported by a partner civil society organization with experience of intervention in the area, such initiatives can be more fl exible and more sustainable than top-down interventions. The paper recommends that project funding decisions for microcredit programmes should take account of their potential to build social capacity, strengthen grassroots organizations, engage community participation and complement other local programmes (including improving relations with local government agencies), rather than focus only on fi nancial sustainability.KEYWORDS Argentina / civil society / community-based organizations / gender / housing / microcredit / participation / urban poverty / urban development
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