Citywide Slum Upgrading and Prevention: How to achieve scale with Innovative Financing Strategies

The purpose of the training is to brainstorm and exchange ideas on the elements of innovative financing strategy to achieve scale at city and national scales and contribute to enriching the PSUP financing toolkit under development.

The training event will create space for participants the learning from each other and providing inputs to on one of the key questions on financing slum upgrading at scale: How can financial resources be mobilized at local level at community, central and local governments, private sector (risk capital) and be leveraged by international sources (blending, International Finance institutions etc.).

Thus, the workshop will focus and deepen learning exchange on Four thematic areas of finance as follows:

THEME 1: Overview of possible local finance sources that can be integrated (Blended). This will seek to demonstrate the possible financial tools a country or city has at their disposal and innovative mechanisms to unlock the potential (legislation, policy etc.). These will touch on: How to mobilize non-public sector financing; How to engage private sector as risk-sharing partner and; how to effectively mobilize slum dweller investments

THEME 2: Leveraging private resources across 2 time scales: How to move from subsidy based intervention to a self-sufficient market based slum upgrading over the time. The different financial instruments available also will be worth evaluation and opportunities for private sector to get involved.

THEME 3: Balance Public Intervention across 3 sides of Affordability. How to make the best use of public interventions and resources to achieve affordability by reducing cost of supply, strengthening demand and deepening financial access including empowering community through livelihood enhancement to increase financing capacity of the community to participate and contribute in slum upgrading

THEME 4: Governance and institutional roles: What are necessary policy, legal, and/ or regulatory reforms to facilitate the achievement of national policy targets on slum upgrading and urban poverty reduction

The methodology of the training event will consist of theoretical introductions from UN-Habitat. The introduction will be followed by 3 working groups of above to discuss and make presentation of discussion. This will be followed by the presentation of case studies by UN-Habitat explaining above themes further. Overall, this will provide the inputs for a practical review to UN-Habitat and contribute in development of citywide slum upgrading financing strategy and a broad learning experience for all participants.