Community Organiser

SPARC - Society For The Promotion of Area Resource Centers is one of the larger NGOs in India focused on facilitating the creation of voice of the urban poor in the development of the city. For the past 30 years, the Alliance of SPARC and its two community based social movements, National Slum Dwellers' federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan has made a profound difference to thousands of households living under the threat of evictions/demolitions by providing them with the tools they need to engage the state and the city to secure permanent housing. The Alliance also works on sanitation and has provided hundreds of thousands of individuals with individual or community toilets in several states of India and supports communities to explore a wide range of solutions which will improve the quality of their lives. The key to this success is working with women's collectives in communities and empowering them to make a difference. We began in 1984, with an Area Resource Center in Byculla, Mumbai where women from the pavements settlements came together to discuss their problems and find solutions. They formed Mahila Milan and along with NSDF they launched a self developed census of themselves to collect data from the people living in temporary or permanent slums which we call enumerations by the poor themselves. Those who were once In visible to the government and institutions, the urban poor are now visible and can no longer be ignored.