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UN Volunteers Policy Paper ‘Caring Cities’ Volunteering in Urban Development and the role of the United Nations Volunteer Programme PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME Thematic view and illustrations PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME Thematic view and illustrations Page 54 Page 55 tary education often focus on aspects of the daily life of the students – therefore preparing them to deal with such aspects better. Consequently, there should be an urban specificity in such programmes. Secondly, the teaching programmes also have to be adequate themselves to address the requirements of the time- and space-compressed pace of urban living. As noted earlier in this publication, one of the main areas of activity which match UNV’s attributes is capacity-building (thus including teaching), which in turn constitutes the core activity of educational programmes. Similar to the case of the other issues, UNV’s intervention can be either direct with the target beneficiaries or/and through local institutions. Other projects which address the causes of the problem include confidence building, the generation of income to the excluded group, and awareness-raising campaigns to change the discriminatory perception about specific groups by the population in general . The aforementioned types of project can be implemented on their own or together with initiatives tailor-made to specific groups. Previous side text have included examples with street children, HIV-AIDS patients and prostitutes. Text N illustrates a case with the disabled. The next section of this publication contains an illustration focusing on the informal sector. 4.3. The economic domain Urban settlements include specific types of economic activities. Therefore, support to such activities requires particular technical solutions. At the same time that the urban economy requires macro-level support and policies of integration with the national and international systems, it also requires intervention at the grassroots. For instance, the urban poor need support in at least three main areas: processes of production, regulatory framework, and credit. Processes of production Some industrialized countries are witnessing a certain level of economic fusion (and therefore lack of differentiation) between urban and rural areas - e.g. people based in the rural areas but providing services in cities (telecommuting), factories moving to challenges. With its lively café, arts and crafts shop and traditional massage services offered by blind professionals, the National Centre for Disabled Persons has become a popular tourist destination. It is also a place where the disabled can reclaim their lives, through training and employment opportunities and by belonging fully to a community. O -------------------------------------------- Support to urban enterprises in developing countries through corporate volunteerism ----------------------------------------------- Corporate volunteerism is a growing trend in the private sector. It constitutes a type of activity directly linked to UNV’s mandate and to its objective of promoting volunteerism. So far, corporate volunteerism has progressed mostly in companies based in industrialised countries (although a limited number of cases in developing countries also exist). Corporate volunteerism has focused mainly on employees working with nearby communities. At the same time, one of the specialisms of UNV is to administer individuals or teams of volunteer experts working in outreach projects. UNV provides the travel arrangements, and supports the experts in the countries where they would work. Therefore, UNV’s strategy for partnership in the field of corporate volunteerism is to offer its added value to expand the current employeecommunity relations beyond the local realm: - To support companies from industrialised countries to move beyond projects in their home countries – hence to send their employees for projects in developing countries. - To support companies from developing countries to move beyond local projects – hence to send their employees for projects in outreach areas in the country and in other countries. This initiative includes the benefits of ‘mirror volunteers’ – the countryside, etc. However, in most of the developing world (and indeed in many other parts of the industrialized world) there is still a sharp division between urban and rural processes of production. Cities concentrate services and/or industrial production; therefore, the skills required for the urban economy are specific. Technical assistance and capacity building are fundamental in fostering the urban processes of production in developing countries: in particular to help the poor establish and develop a productive niche in the urban economy. As already noted in this paper, UNV has comparative advantages for carrying out such activities. Besides the fact that these activities are based on labour-intensive, extensive work, they also benefit from other attributes of UNV such as flexibility, broad scope of action and speed of response. These attributes are especially important in addressing the fast pace and constant shifts and challenges of the urban economy (e.g. abrupt changes in demand). UNV administers a volunteer programme (UNISTAR) through which international executives and technical experts offer their expertise in developing countries and promote corporate volunteerism worldwide (see text O). Finally, the correlation between social cohesion and economic development (explained before) demonstrate further contributions of volunteerism in the economic realm – i.e. via its role in building or strengthening social cohesion.
UN Volunteers Policy Paper ‘Caring Cities’ Volunteering in Urban Development and the role of the United Nations Volunteer Programme PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME Thematic view and illustrations PART II – THE UNITED NATIONS VOLUNTEERS PROGRAMME Thematic view and illustrations Page 56 Page 57 Regulatory framework Many units of production in developing countries are part of the informal sector, which means that such firms operate outside the regulatory framework of the government. There is ample evidence that the urban informal sector plays a very important role in the economy of developing countries. It has also had a particular impact on the alleviation of urban poverty. The advantages of this sector to the poor and less skilled producers include less or no need for paperwork, for formal training and for initial capital (ease of entry). The proportion of the labour force engaged in urban informal production in developing countries ranges from 20 to 70 percent. As for consumption, many goods supplied by the informal sector would otherwise not be accessible to poor people – because formal/ larger-scale firms lack the interest to cater for them or because their prices are higher (e.g. UNDP, 1991; Werna, 1997). Although the informal sector is not exclusive to urban areas, it has particular features in such areas, which therefore require specific technical answers. Firstly, each process of production has specific regulatory aspects - and, as noted before, there are processes of production which are specific to urban areas. Secondly, because informal producers operate outside government control, they are susceptible to coercion, which may disrupt their business. Informal producers in rural areas often escape control, because they work in a subsistence economy (which needs no economic regulation), and live in isolation or in remote regions. Urban informal producers, in their turn, are directly exposed to coercion on a daily basis. They work faceto-face with the police and with sectors of the population who are unhappy with their presence for different reasons (e.g. informal producers represent unfair competition vis-à-vis formal producers; they overcrowd the streets; they cater mainly for the poor and therefore ‘attract poverty’). Although there has been growing recognition of the need to support the informal sector, in many countries informal producers are still harassed and even prevented from working. The solui.e. private sector employees supporting their counterparts in other countries. The initiative targets both urban- and rural based enterprises alike. P -------------------------------------------- Volunteer support to the informal sector in Zanzibar, Tanzania ----------------------------------------------- UNVs’ initiative to combat poverty among women in Zanzibar, Tanzania takes the form of entrepreneurial training. A UN Volunteer gave training to business extension workers, helped women organise themselves into groups to exchange problems and solutions, and conducted a market survey of microbusiness opportunities. She also facilitated the groups in acquiring legal status and access to formal banking services. Q -------------------------------------------- Volunteer support to the urban economy in Liberia through micro-credit schemes ----------------------------------------------- UNV is actively involved in Liberia in the UNDP/UNV- Trickle UP collaboration Project ‘Promotion and Support for Income Generating Activities Among Vulnerable Groups In Liberia’. This tripartite initiative started in 1995 with UNV as the executing agency. The project follows the Trickle UP grants approach and beneficiaries are the most vulnerable groups such as ex-militants, single headed female households and youths disabled during the internal conflict. The project targets the poorest 30% of the population providing them a grant of US $100, paid in two installments of US $50. The tion is definitely not to evict informal producers from cities and towns and to prevent them from carrying out their business. This would only increase the ranks of the unemployed, with its multiplier effects (poverty, violence, etc.). Moreover, considering that the informal sector is the supplier of particular services/ goods for the urban poor, suppression of informal production would also exacerbate the needs of this part of the population. Solutions to the problems of the informal sector require intense negotiations between the different urban stakeholders (e.g. local authorities, representatives of the formal private sector, the informal producers). Such negotiations fall within the broad framework of ‘urban governance’, already analysed in this paper. Consequently, this shows the role of UNV as mediators at least in the initial stages of the process. In addition, the process of gradual ‘formalisation’ of informal producers requires labourintensive training on issues such as paperwork and other bureaucratic procedures. Finance The urban economy is often more monetarized than its rural counterpart, therefore exposing urban producers to a greater need for credit. At the same time, urban financial schemes also entail qualitative changes. To give a well-known example: the successful experience in micro-financing of the Grameen Bank started in Bangladesh and is being replicated in many countries worldwide. This experience has focused mainly in rural areas, and its success is strongly based on the social and solidarity bonds between community members (which prevent each member from defaulting on payment). However, as emphasised throughout this paper, such social/solidarity bonds in urban areas are often much weaker. Consequently, the counterpart urban micro-finance schemes have to be qualitatively different: they have either to build/strengthen such bonds, or to use an alternative approach, which does not rely on them. Either way, such equivalent schemes can take advantage of UNV’s attributes, as they need day-to-day intensive work directly with local communities. Text Q below provides the illustration of a project in Liberia.
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