Aspirations of Urban Communities

The study will explore the needs and aspirations of low-income urban communities.

Our Focus

What do women, transgender, men, girls, and boys, living in urban low-income settlements/ neighborhoods, view as their most significant needs and priorities?

What do community members identify as local resources?

What do community members see as their roles in meeting these needs and priorities?

Which institutions can support to meet their articulated aspirations, needs and priorities?

The WASH Institute wants to commission a study to develop a deeper understanding of the needs, aspirations and priorities of urban communities living in the low-income settlements/ neighborhoods of selected cities in the state of Maharashtra. The Institute believes that community engagement is critical in Water, Sanitation & Hygiene (WSH) ecosystem for its planning and sustainability. In addition to WSH services, the community also needs other opportunities and services for ‘ease of living’. Participation of community in defining and articulating these needs and aspirations are the building blocks for robust citizen engagement. A top-down, expert driven approach to appraisal, planning and management often limits ownership, accountability, and sustainability of development programs, whereas a participatory approach can overcome those limitations.

PRIA has been invited by the WASH Institute to submit a proposal to undertake a participatory research study involving the community and key stakeholders in select cities of Maharashtra. This will be a joint initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), Center for Water and Sanitation (C-WAS) based at CEPT Research & Development Foundation (CRDF), CEPT University, Ahmedabad, and WASH Institute as the host institution.

The proposed study will explore the needs and aspirations of low-income urban communities in an open-ended manner. While the WASH Institute initially prioritized WSH as one of the main sectors around which the community needs would be identified, it also recognized other needs and aspirations of the household members. Thus, the study will encourage the community members to articulate and share their needs, aspirations, and the associated institutions as they prioritize. However, to organize the findings from mapping of community aspirations and the institutions they might associate or relate to, we propose a few sectors as indicative categories. These indicative sectors will be explored in a disaggregated way keeping in mind the differential needs and aspirations that might exist for adolescents, youths, adults, elderly people across gender, caste/ethnicity, and religion.

Activities –

• A combination of Transect Walk, Resource and Social Mapping, Timeline, Venn Diagram and Priority Ranking will be used to understand the socio-geography of each settlement/ neighborhood, identify existing community resources and significant stakeholders.
• Mobile phones to undertake large scale participatory surveys involving young women and men from the community as enumerators.
• Facilitating and conducting two focus group discussions in each settlement/ neighborhood – one with the women and the other with the men.
• Discussion will be facilitated with the adolescents using art-based methods like drawing murals, poetry sessions, collage making, etc.
• Conducting key informant interviews with selected institutional stakeholders using a semi-structured questionnaire.

Funder: Water Sanitation and Hygiene Institute