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Housing, Infrastructure & Services
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Housing, Infrastructure & Services

Tools and Resources

Click on the following links to access tools and technical expertise related to housing, infrastructure, and services issues:

CHF International
A non-profit organization that often receives grants from USAID. With its roots in affordable housing, CHF works with communities to identify their needs and achievable solutions. CHF now works on a broad range of community initiatives, but still has a focus on infrastructure, housing, and service delivery.

Cities Alliance Shelter Finance
The Cities Alliance is a global coalition of cities and their development partners committed to scaling up successful approaches to poverty reduction. The Alliance helps cities create development strategies, improve accountability for service delivery, and demonstrate financial sustainability that will attract long-term capital investments for infrastructure and other services.

Gujarat Mahila Housing Self Employed Women's Association Trust
SEWA's goal is to improve the housing and overall living conditions of its members by providing access to housing market information, legal services, and shelter finance, and also influence housing and infrastructure related development policies and activities. It does this through community involvement and mobilization, technical assistance to local institutions, individual training, and credit provided by SEWA bank.

Homeless International and CLIFF – Community Led Infrastructure Finance Facility
HI provides small grants to community organizations to capitalize small revolving funds to help pay for small-scale slum development projects. HI also pays for research relating to urban development and finance, slum upgrading, housing development, and infrastructure provision. The CLIFF is managed by HI and provides funds to communities to assist them in large-scale slum upgrading, including provision of housing, infrastructure, and services.

International Housing Coalition – IHC
Founded and capitalized by the National Association of REALTORS (NAR), the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) and Habitat for Humanity International (HFHI) to promote "HOUSING FOR ALL" as an essential element to ending poverty worldwide. Recognizing the worldwide housing problem and the lack of priority being given to housing issues, the IHC was organized for the purpose of restoring housing to a position of importance and priority on the world development agenda.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology Urban Upgrading
An interactive website that provides an introduction to slums and slum upgrading. The website includes definitions, research, case studies, links to other organizations, and tools for those engaging in upgrading the urban environment.

PADCO
PADCO provides planning and urban development services worldwide, helping national and local authorities to better assess their priorities, and then prepare practical implementation plans. Services are generally focused on improving shelter conditions and access to shelter, promoting local economic development, and improving the delivery of urban services.

Shack / Slum Dwellers International
Federation of individual slum dweller associations that links slum dwellers worldwide to disseminate best practices in improving living conditions in slums, and directly involves them in slum upgrading activities through working with donors, government officials, and other slum dwellers.

Shelter Associates
Shelter Associates is an NGO working in Pune, India, consisting of architects, social workers, GIS experts, and community workers. They work with the urban poor, particularly women in informal settlements to facilitate and provide technical support to community-managed housing (slum rehabilitation) and infrastructure projects.

Shorebank International - SBI
An international consulting entity, SBI works to create housing markets by linking local private sector financing with low and middle income families. SBI capitalizes on over 40 years of experience providing financing to low-income home purchasers in the U.S. by designing innovative housing products specifically tailored to emerging market needs, as well as completing market assessments and analyses of country regulatory and legal environments.

SPARC – Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres
Since 1986, SPARC has been part of an Alliance with the National Slum Dwellers Federation and Mahila Milan ("Women Together" in Hindi). The Alliance's goal is to create supporting institutions necessary for large numbers of poor to access housing and related infrastructure. Ultimately the goal is to have organized groups of urban poor become more involved with the management and development of their cities.

UN - Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council
The Council was formed under a mandate by the UN, and focuses on advocacy and awareness campaigns to improve sanitation and hygiene delivery systems. The Council also disseminates knowledge and best practices, and develops partnerships with a variety of organizations to further expand outreach and programming.

UN-HABITAT
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme, UN-HABITAT, is the United Nations agency for human settlements. It is mandated by the UN General Assembly to promote socially and environmentally sustainable towns and cities with the goal of providing adequate shelter for all.

UNICEF – Water, Environment, and Sanitation
UNICEF works in more than 90 countries around the world to improve water supplies and sanitation facilities in schools and communities, and to promote safe hygiene practices. They sponsor a wide range of activities and work with many partners, including families, communities, governments and like-minded organizations.

US Environmental Protection Agency – Sustainable Water and Sanitation Infrastructure
The US EPA leads the US Government efforts to promote a cleaner, healthier environment. It conducts research, develops and enforces environmental regulations, provides financial assistance and educational resources to state and local governments, and publishes materials. Many standards and programs sponsored by the EPA have applicability in the developing world.

WASTE
An NGO that works with organizations and residents in low-income urban environments to improve living conditions. WASTE specifically focuses on solid waste management and low cost sanitation, and works with small-scale entrepreneurs for the provision of urban services.

Water and Sanitation Program
Water and Sanitation Program is a joint venture between the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) with a basic mission of providing safe water and sanitation to the world's poor. It currently focuses most of its efforts on "capacity building – forming partnerships with and between nongovernmental organizations, governments at all levels, community organizations, private industry, and donors to effect the regulatory and structural changes needed for broad reform."

The World Bank
The World Bank is the largest provider of financing for water supply and sanitation (WSS) projects in the world, and is committed to providing "efficient, affordable, and sustainable delivery of WSS services." The Bank provides loans and credit to its member countries for use in improving WSS services; support includes loans and equity from the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and loan guarantees from the Multilateral Investment Guaranty Agency (MIGA).

World Health Organization (WHO) Water Sanitation and Health Group
The World Health Organization works on water, sanitation, and hygiene issues where programs can have substantial impacts on reducing water and waste-related diseases.

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