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Jockin Arputham of Slum Dwellers International Accepts Skoll Award

Speakers

  • Jockin Arputham worked for more than 40 years in slums and shanty towns, building representative organizations into powerful partners with governments and international agencies for the betterment of urban living. Arputham was the president of the National Slum Dwellers Federation which he founded in the 70s and of Slum Dwellers International which networks slum and shack dweller organizations and federations from over twenty countries across the world. The National Slum Dwellers Federation works closely with Mahila Milan, a collective of savings groups formed by homeless women and women living in slums across India, and with SPARC, a Mumbai-based NGO, and together they have been instrumental is supporting tens of thousands of the urban poor access housing and sanitation. Jockin realized that slum dweller organizations had to change their strategy. They had to make governments see them as legitimate citizens with knowledge and capacities to implement solutions. So they sought to work in partnership with government to address their housing problems – and other problems. He often said that how can you reduce urban poverty if you do not listen to and work with the urban poor. In this way, he built more than 20,000 toilet seats in Mumbai alone. He insisted on new standards on redeveloped housing. Over the years, Arputham built 30,000 houses in India, and 1,000,000 houses abroad. Funding for his work came from many sources. He visited many other countries to encourage and support slum or shack dwellers to organize and to encourage them to take their own initiatives to show government what they are capable of. He was the winner of the 2000 Ramon Magsaysay Award for Peace and International Understanding and an honorary Ph.D. from KIIT University, Bhubaneswar, in 2009. In 2011, the Government of India bestowed on him its fourth highest civilian honor, the Padma Shri award. The Skoll Foundation deeply mourns the loss of Jockin Arputham who passed away in 2018.