|
The Community Led
Finance facility (CLIFF) is a financial mechanism
that facilitates access to capital by organisations
of the urban poor. Now in its third year of
operation in India, as of December 2004 CLIFF
capital funds had supported ten community-led
development projects: eight housing developments,
providing safe, secure and affordable shelter with
secure tenure for 2816 households; and, two
sanitation projects designed to benefit over 200,000
families living in slums in Mumbai and Pune, both in
the state of Maharashtra.
A main aim of CLIFF is
to leverage the financial and non-financial assets
of slum dwellers so as to access resources from the
public and private sectors. CLIFF has allocated
capital funds of some GBPS£P4.2 million, which is
projected to produce revenues of about £12 million,
including £4.5 million in government contracts and
subsidy payments, and £7.2 million from the sale of
residential units. As at December 2004, a total of
£1.7million has been leveraged from private sector
banks.
Central to the CLIFF
approach is that it responds to local demand and
local capacity. It does not seek to plan, manage and
implement slum development projects conceived by
professionals, rather to catalyse support for
large-scale solutions developed by poor communities
and the organisations with whom they work.
CLIFF works with poor
communities and their networks that have the
capacity to manage money, usually built up through
experiences of community-based savings and credit
schemes. CLIFF helps those communities manage and
mitigate the risks of their development projects,
including political and financial risks, thereby
helping them to achieve greater scale. For example,
CLIFF-financed projects have reduced the delays in
obtaining permissions from city and state
authorities, which in turn reduces delays in
receiving subsidies, contract payments and other
revenues. An outcome of this process are
precedent-setting for pro-poor changes in government
policy and practice.
During the course of
2005, the first steps were taken to initiate the
second CLIFF pilot scheme, this time in Nairobi,
Kenya. The pilot will be undertaken in the huge
Kibera slum by Kenyan partners Pamoja Trust, and
Muungano wa Wanavajiji.
Back
to top
|
