Manchester Inner City Exchange

Darren | 20 Sep 2019

"How can we become more politically savvy?"

This was one of many questions posed during an incredible two days at the first Manchester Inner City Exchange which brought together 15 community groups from across 9 different neighbourhoods in Manchester and Stockport.

Local residents shared stories of change over time in their neighbourhoods and the challenges and opportunities they are currently faced with as well as strategies, ideas and initiatives for bringing their communities together around shared goals. The themes were, perhaps unsurprisingly, common: people feel ‘underestimated’, ‘invisible’, and ‘fear to go out’.

Yet, this time and space was brimming with creativity, determination, and imagination with street poets, craft and writing collectives, and even a theatre group. The room was also brimming with courage. In Tina Cribbin's poem, The Courage, (from her new collection Classphemy that she kindly shared readings from during the exchange), she writes:

"It's the courage to stand against the rising tide and

Refusal to hide

From policies that aim to cause pain and suffering with human rights denied"

We heard positive stories of how courageous residents have brought change to their once-forgotten communities both internationally and closer to home. About local residents joining together to stand up for their rights, their land, their housing, their access to the cities and towns that are the places they call home. We heard about Abram Communities Together's new neighbourhood plan; we heard from Granby 4 Streets on their twenty year struggle to save their neighbourhood and develop a community land trust; and from Slum/Shack Dwellers International Kenya on how a savings-based movement for bottom up local development has grown out of Nairobi’s anti-eviction struggle and is now working hand in hand with the Greater Manchester Savers Network.

This was a residents-only space for communities to talk freely and identify their shared collective stories, their shared imagined futures. By the end of day two, the most popular question was:

"How can we work together to tell more stories that get heard?"

If you are a local resident in an inner city area of Manchester who wants to be part of the answer, please get in touch to find out details of the next event in November… 

Swapping ideas at the Anson community shop

Darren | 29 Mar 2019

In March, women from Mums Mart Savers in Wythenshawe and Miles Platting Savers visited the Anson Community Grocer in Rusholme to share ideas about bringing residents together and organising against poverty in their neighbourhoods. Participants swapped notes on about running savings clubs and food cooperatives as well as tenants association organising, and discussed the city-wide Manchester Inner City Exchange that is coming up in June.

International Women’s Day

Darren | 08 Mar 2019

Mums Mart Savers were pleased to be invited by their local councillor Madeline Monaghan to attend the annual International Women’s Day event at Wythenshawe Forum on 8 March. Mums Marters were able to network with a roomful of wonderful women and Maria Allen stole the show with an amazing speech about how Mums Mart Savers came to be and the difference it has made to local women in Sharston ward.

Greater Manchester Savers at the Practical Community Development Conference

Darren | 31 Oct 2018

Savers from Mums Mart, Brinnington and the Kenyan Slum Dwellers Federation presented together at a conference on Practical Community Development in Levenshulme which was organised by the Community Development Practice group convened by Macc in Manchester.  Mums Mart shared their story of how they first came together as a group of local women in Benchill and then learned about the savings approach from the South African Alliance in 2015-16. Jack Makau from SDI Kenya was able to share some stories about the Kenyan experience of building a savings-based movement. The workshop was mainly focused on informal question and answer and discussion as participants quizzed the Greater Manchester savers about the ways they have adapted this approach for the UK context.

“With savings we can do wonders”: a Manchester-Muungano exchange

Darren | 07 Aug 2018

In June 2018, six Greater Manchester residents went on a learning exchange visit to Muungano Wa Wanavijiji (the Kenyan Slum Dwellers Federation) in Nairobi as part of the Realising Just Cities project: ‘Community-led organising: Seeing the inner city from the South’. In the spirit of experience sharing and knowledge exchange, the Greater Manchester team decided they would like to share some extracts from their peer-to-peer interviews and a final joint reflection with a wider audience. Some background information precedes these reflections.

 “It has been a ritual, especially in Kenya, that we get knowledge from the West and we bring them to Africa so we can learn from them… So it is a good platform that we can now share our experiences and they can be taken back to the West as best practices…” Rashid Mutua, Chair of Muungano Wa Wanavijiji

Who is Muungano? 

Muungano wa Wanavijiji ('Muungano') is ‘the Kenyan federation of slum dwellers and urban poor people’. It is made up of groups of slum residents from cities and towns across the country. It is the Kenyan affiliate of an international social movement called Slum/Shack Dwellers International which joins together savings-based movements of low-income women in 32 countries across the Global South. As well as federating together savings groups in settlements and cities across Kenya, Muungano partners with the Akiba Mashinani Trust and a technical support agency called SDI Kenya. Together they make up the ‘Kenyan Alliance’. 

Susan Wanjiru, Muungano Leader in Kambi Moto explains how savings prepares communities for collective projects: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6EHKbcnyd0

What is "savings" or "savings-based organising"? 

Local residents agree to begin saving together and follow the approaches used by affiliates of the international social movement Shack/Slum Dwellers International. This means that they agree to manage their own activities and set their own rules to ensure that anyone can participate regardless of income. 

Savings scheme members save daily or weekly. For daily savings ‘collectors’ visit each member and savers can put any spare change they have into their savings account.  This daily visit means that they have the opportunity to save whenever they do have some change but also means members can find out about each other’s welfare and support each other.  These savings form a pool of money. Some savings groups also provide emergency and income-generation loans to their members.

 As savings group members work together to gather and manage their funds, they increase their financial management skills and build trust between each other.  Over time, as they meet often, they talk about their problems and their needs. Together they begin to think about how they can address larger issues of housing and basic services. Savings schemes form Federations.  Federations are strengthened as their member savings groups visit other savings groups in their own city and then others in other settlements and cities – and also other nations.  These exchanges are inspirational and build capacity.

Working together, savings schemes can ‘enumerate’ their settlements – doing their own census as they map and survey their neighbourhoods.  They use this information to discuss their priorities. Backed by their savings and maps and household data from enumerations, savings schemes talk to the authorities about how they can address their need for land tenure, access to water and sanitation, improved housing, and many other issues.  

Elizabeth, Community Mobiliser in Mukuru Special Planning Area explains savings and bottom-up neighbourhood planning:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQnwihl_Pgo

Savings in Greater Manchester

In 2016 after an exchange in Manchester with the South African Alliance, a group of women based in Wythenshawe called Mums Mart decided “savings” would benefit their community and set up a new savings scheme. They also visited the South African Alliance in July 2017. They have since expanded from a small number of friends saving together to an initiative of 40 members which is now working together to renovate an old apartment into a shared community space for the neighbourhood. The “Mums Mart Savers” have begun reaching out to other neighbourhoods across Greater Manchester. Residents from Brinnington (Donna and Jeni), Lower Broughton (Sue), Collyhurst (John) and Benchill (Sharon and Mark) joined together to form a delegation for this latest learning exchange to Nairobi.

Reflections on the exchange

LISTEN: Anastascia Wairimu on savings mobilisation and international exchange - “with savings we can do wonders”

What reflections do you have about the exchange so far?

Mark: We’ve all seen African nations on TV… I really did think it was wrack and ruin… and what I found was, yeah, there’s tough conditions but they deal really well with it

Donna: I think it has been a really good experience to see a different community from what we’re used to, to see how people are living… all the people we’ve met have been absolutely lovely and really welcoming. They really want to show us this side of their community, they really want us to understand it, learn from it and it’s been really good… The way they save makes a difference… 

Jeni: And you can see their changes

Donna: You can see they’re advancing

Are there ways in which being in Kenya and visiting these communities has changed your perceptions about life in the UK or about your own neighbourhood?

Sharon: I’ve come to the conclusion that there is no community left in England. The way these people work together… But I don’t think it would take much to bring it back… I think there are little snippets of communities out there.

Sue: It comes together when there is some kind of event… like when we got flooded, the community came together but it takes something like that to bring them together. 

Jeni: Yeah, they don’t just do it like that, it takes something to happen.

Sharon: I think our communities could be brought back quite easily… I think it’s just going to take us to sit round and see how… Cos it is hard. They seem to find it so easy to get people mobilised.

Mark: When we get home from work we shut our front door… That’s the last thing that would happen over here… The civilisations that are deemed behind the Western White world if that’s the right phrase I mean no offence by it… instead of looking at us and saying ‘we want that’, what I think they should be doing is looking at us and going ‘we don’t want to make that same mistake’. 

Donna: I just think there is a bit more sense of care over here. They seem to care about each other and care about what they want, you’ve not got that back in the UK. You’ve got a lot of people that stick to what they know and stick to who they know, and they don’t care about the wider community, they don’t care about their neighbours like they used to.

What similarities are there between your community and the communities that we have visited?

Donna: In our country and over here obviously right across the board there is a problem with housing. Although it is slightly different it’s still a problem with housing…we’ve got homelessness at home, they’ve got the slums here…settlements… that’s their option over here…it is poverty it’s just on a different level.

Mark: I think there’s loads. One, it’s obvious that generation to generation are trying to make a better start for their next generation. You want better for your kids. Which I think is the same in ours. I think the worry of having a roof over your head is exactly the same as ours.

Sharon: A lot of the time for us it’s, we’re worried about, where’s the next meal coming from? Where’s the next rent payment coming from? How are we going to pay the electric?

How has the exchange made you feel about your ability to do things in your own neighbourhood? If you are running or planning a savings scheme – what will be easy and what will be challenging? 

John: I feel like I could do more, we could be more productive. Being over here has taught me that we can do more in our communities

Sharon: I think it’s going to be hard to get people motivated and involved… because people get an apathy… like ‘nothing’s happening’ and they will disappear again…so I think we are going to have to really think hard about keeping people interested. 

Jeni:  I think the getting people together will be easy because I know plenty of people that as soon as you mention that to them they are going to be straight to it

John: It’s keeping them.

Jeni: Yeah its keeping them… we need to give them an incentive to keep coming…

Sue: I mean once you get them in and they do start that saving...

Jeni: Yeah, they might like to see it working first before they try... 

Sharon: That’s an easy thing for me because ours is working.

Donna: I think we’ve kind of decided, we’re going to start off small and just try it…

Jeni: We just need to get it in place and see how it goes. If it works it works. If it doesn’t, well…then we’ll have to find something else… I don’t think it will be a problem I think people will come and they’ll stay I really do

Sharon: Just take it slow and don’t have any expectations… don’t think ‘Yes! This is going to take off and I’m gonna have 200 savers in a week. You know what I mean? Just take each week as it comes and let the word get around… 

Mark: I always go back to sport…talking about savings is just like talking about boxing… it’s a tool you can use

Sharon: That’s what some people don’t get, they think we just want your money, whereas really we just want you to become part of the community…I quite often say to people, people who haven’t been for a while and I contact on social media or whatever …and they say oh I’ve not got any money, I say, you’ve not got to have any money, just come along to savings, you don’t have to save, just come along to join us!

If you would like to be in touch with any of the participants in the Nairobi exchange, or would like more information, contact Sophie King at the Urban Institute, University of Sheffield.


A Manchester-Muungano exchange

Darren | 07 Aug 2018

In June 2018, six local residents from Salford, Stockport and Manchester travelled to Nairobi to learn first-hand about twenty years of mobilisation by the powerful savings-based movement Muungano Wa Wanavijiji and what they have achieved.

Read more about the exchange here.

When you get a front door, remember to leave it open

Darren | 26 Sep 2017

A Manchester-South Africa exchange reveals striking similarities in the dynamics of urban inequality.

“It’s all about trust” said Marie Hampshire, two days into a week-long community exchange with members of the South African Alliance in July 2017, a grassroots movement of women-led savings schemes affiliated to Slum/Shack Dwellers International or SDI. Marie is a member of Mums Mart, a women’s group from Benchill in the British city of Manchester that brings low-income families together around food, monthly markets and, most recently, a new kind of savings scheme.

Each member saves small amounts with the support of their local group, and in the process of coming together the group learns about their needs and challenges and tries to respond collectively. Mums Mart was introduced to savings-based organising after meeting members of the Alliance in Manchester a year earlier. Now, other groups in the city are starting to explore how women’s savings federations could rebuild trust and solidarity in their neighbourhoods.

Read the full article at openDemocracy