In its first 3-year stage, the ACCA Program supported a process of citywide and community-driven slum upgrading in 165 cities, in 19 Asian cities.  In all these cities, community people are the primary doers in planning and implementing projects which tackle problems of land, infrastructure and housing at scale, in partnership with their local governments and other stakeholders. The program has demonstrated a new kind of development intervention, in which the poor have the freedom to decide things and manage their own development.  And flexible finance is the program's chief tool to let community people themselves make the change.  All these projects have proved that urban poor communities and their development partners in all these and other cities are ready to address citywide problems and citywide development together.

That process is continuing, and in late September, the latest ACCA /ACHR committee meeting was held in Mumbai, India (Sept. 26-28, 2013). This was the second committee meeting in the program's second phase, but the 14 ^th since the ACCA program began. The Mumbai meeting, which was hosted by the SPARC / Mahila Milan / NSDF Alliance, was attended by 40 people from 10 countries. The ACCA meeting was held right after a two-day program of project visits (to housing relocation projects and community toilet projects of the NSDF / MM / SPARC Alliance in Mumbai) and sharing of stories with a small group of Mahila Milan members from Mumbai and Pune in the Byculla office.

Attached  is the Mumbai ACCA meeting report, which summarizes the new project proposals that were presented, the issued discussed and the decisions taken during the meeting.  Several new ACCA projects were proposed during the meeting, and after reviewing and discussing them, a total budget of US$553,300 was approved to support projects in 11 new cities and 12 ongoing cities in 11 Asian countries (including 6 BIG housing projects, 2 loans from the ACCA Regional Revolving Loan Fund and 101 small upgrading projects).

by TOM: Asian Coalition for Housing Rights