Informal Settlements… a Case for Concern, Hope, and Action

Written By Harvard Urbanists

By Daniela Shuman

The UN predicts that ⅔ of the world’s population will live in cities by 2050, and 3 billion of these people will be living in slums. More than 1 billion people live in slums worldwide today. Informal settlements (slums) are defined as any settlement that is illegal or falls outside of official governance. These communities often lack basic government services, including running water, sanitation, or infrastructure.

How big is the problem? Because of the lack of regulation, several systemic issues plague these communities. Slums are often hotspots for viral infection.1 Depending on the country, law enforcement is either minimal or completely non-existent. Crime and violence can be common.2 Displacement is a frequent problem in these developments.3 The impending climate crisis is also not helping; informal settlements are at a growing risk of flooding.4 Educational attainment is not widespread in these communities, relating to the high rates of unemployment. There is a severe shortage of capital, and access to credit is not easy. Banks are unlikely to offer western city interest rates on capital to entrepreneurs in these developments.

While informal settlements can be hotspots for severe urban poverty, there is a plethora of opportunity within these dense communities. G10 Favelas,5 an organization dedicated to the improvement of favelas (slums in Brazil), believes in both addressing the basic injustices and encouraging prosperity and growth. The Center for International Development and the Mahindra Humanities Center hosted G10 Favelas last week to discuss their progress since foundation in 2013. Gilson Rodrigues (President and Founder) is from Paraisopolis, a large favela in Sao Paulo with around 100,000 inhabitants. He described how his childhood of poverty galvanized him to perform in school and seek higher education. G10 is dedicated to bringing prosperity to these communities across Brazil through four main programs:

  • Access to Credit: The G10 Bank was created to give entrepreneurs in favelas access to credit: people became delivery people, cooks, teachers, tailors, etc. 

  • Legitimacy: With no government oversight, houses are not addressed, which means people have no address when signing up for a bank, getting prescriptions, receiving deliveries, etc. G10 created an addressing and delivery system called Brazil Xpress. The system provides people with a unique alpha-numeric code associated with their household. The delivery system has opened up the communities to new jobs and goods that were previously inaccessible. 

  • Job Training: G10 developed a program to train women to sew, equipping them with the skills needed to start a clothes business. Over 1,100 people have been trained and the community has even started their own fashion line, displayed in the Sao Paulo Fashion Week and Milan. 

  • Health Campaigns: Brazil was hit hard during the pandemic. The favelas particularly had little access to personal protective equipment. G10 fought to fill this institutional gap by providing masks and information about the pandemic to people on the streets. The rates of success were higher in the favelas that G10 worked in than the official work from the city of Sao Paulo. 

G10 Favelas is dependent on donations and philanthropy from richer areas in Brazil and abroad. Donations surged during the pandemic, but philanthropic contributions have significantly dwindled since. Unfortunately, a lot of the philanthropy at scale is small, and only provides for support for basic needs, not prosperity. 

G10’s efforts are solutions to universal institutional voids and can be adapted to other informal settlements. There is reason to believe that such efforts can improve the quality of life for millions (or even billions) of individuals across the globe.

Harvard Urbanists
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