Case Study - NGO, Government, Housing

SEMINAR - PRACTICE

CASE STUDY

NGO – GOVERNMENT – HOUSING

A Non- Governmental Organization (NGO) is a Non – Profit organization (NPO), which is independent from state, and government organizations. These organizations are usually funded by donations from individuals or private companies. Volunteers run these organizations.

NGOs are based on various activities ranging from Scheduled Caste empowerment to sustainable urban development for the poor. They may be for social, political, religious or any other interests.

The goal of an NGO is to find their purpose and find ways to alleviate that purpose. NGOs function in collaboration with their volunteers and external donors; there may be situations where they work with their targeted group of people in order to create a holistic view of development for them.

The funding for the NGOs as mentioned above is through donations from third party investors or volunteers. There is an amount that goes into executing projects and an overhead amount, which is required for the NGO to function. According to the World Association of Non – Governmental Organizations more that 86% of funding should be spent on programs. In most cases these amounts may not be sufficient to run programs, which are based on human lifestyles, which may take a life span to take into effect.

To keep a steady flow one observes a connection between the “Government” and the “Non – Government” Organization.  The idea of an NGO is that the society comes together to find a solution to the problems of the society. There are many schemes, which have been initiated by the Indian Government such as “Scheme of Grant-in-aid to Voluntary and other Organizations Working for Scheduled Castes”, “Integrated Programme for Older Persons”, “Assistance to voluntary organizations for welfare of the OBCs”, etc. These schemes are all initiated to “assist” the NGOs to be able to execute their programs. The question comes that why are these NGOs then required to start these programs, why is the government able to fund their own venture for the NGO purposes?

Micro Home Solutions (MHS) is an NGO based in New Delhi. They are focused on providing basic and affordable services to informal settlements. With the current rise in urbanization there is an increase in the migrants in the cities, due to the shortage of affordable housing in the urban centers there is a formation of informal settlements around the city. These settlements lack basic services, suffer from poor quality construction and may be unsafe for its residents. MHS intends to combine the construction of these settlements with the involvement of the community.

MHS works to empower the concept of a “socially inclusive city”. They do so by involving the settlements in the concept and construction of their settlements. They approach informal settlements and slums as a stage of development rather than an issue. By understanding this they are able to provide better outcomes related to safety, health and social inclusion rather than dismissing the issue.

The studio works with people from all stages of professions ranging from architects and urban designers to project manager and community workers. They combine these various professionals to work on a strategy of “Build and Enable”.

“Build” includes the physical models that are implemented on the ground to make affordable changes to settlements. The projects being undertaken by the studio are based on self – construction methods to include the community, in – situ upgradation and redevelopment to provide changes to the existing situations, creating homeless shelters. Besides construction the studio is work on micro mortgage models as well as developing and managing rental housing, which can provide for the urban poor.

“Enable” is the engagement with research and concepts, which is shared with various other communities. These include, Technical R&D, Research studies, training and exhibitions in order to keep people informed with the changes in development as well as the solutions that can be implemented.

The idea of the case study will be to find the links between the organization, the work implemented and the government. These links will help to understand the functioning of NGOs from their financial sitting to their project implementation. The NGOs will function differently from private firms in terms of the approach to getting a project; NGO works are situation, finance and community specific.

The idea of an NGO being a society driven initiative is one that can be question through studying of various levels of design and construction that is done for their projects.

(This is an initial analysis. Will be adding more information based on their work and questions based on interaction with their studio.)