20091106 - We are ´Slummywood-stars´ :-)

Today was a very busy day. In the morning we visited a slum with SEWA, in order to get some more answers on questions we had with respect to house improvements in slums. We had a meeting with the Community Based Organisation (CBO) of the slum. The women were all very open; happy to provide answers and explain their situation (what last improvement they did for their houses, how they financed these improvements, etc.). All of our questions answered. It really was a very good and useful meeting!

After the meeting we had some time to walk through the slum. The ladies of the CBO accompanied us and invited us inside their homes to look around. This was an amazing as well as touching experience:

• They pointed out what was pucca (good quality, e.g. for walls or roof or house) and kucca (bad quality, e.g. for walls or roof or house), so we finally recognised the difference.
• Also they showed us a house of which the flooring was not heigthened yet; this meant that the lower part of the house was far below street level!
• And several of our questions addressed financing, one of the ladies even showed the document containing all information on the loan for her house improvement: the principal amount, the payment schedule, the payments already done, etc!

Of course, we were just as interesting for the inhabitants of the slum as they were for us, so we attracted a lot of attention again :-)

After a few other meetings/interviews, we went with SAATH to another slum. We had been in this slum before, but never realised that accross the street of the URC (location of our previous meetings) another organisation was housed: the Samvad Community Video Unit. This unit was established because the regular television stations did not address the concerns and needs of people in slums and a magazine was not a good medium as many people in the slums are illiterate. The seven people working in the unit all come from different slums and all have a different background. Videos that are made are made by and for slum inhabitants, address these concerns and needs and result in a ´call for action´ (telling slum inhabitants what actions/behavior are/is required on their side).

Every two months a new video is displayed in a designated locations in around 100 Ahmedabad slums. At each location, around 200 people come to watch the video, after which they have the opportunity to discuss about the subject addressed in the video. One of the videos (on playgrounds for children) has even won awards outside of India (in western countries)!

First we watched the award-winning video. Next was... BEING FILMED OURSELVES WHILE WALKING THROUGH THE SLUM!!! The result will be part of a video they are producing on housing improvements. That video too will be shown in all of the slums. In other words: WE ARE ´SLUMMYWOOD-STARS´!

Clips from video magazines can be found online at: http://tinyurl.com/ch19-SamvadVideos