Vusi Ntsuntsha
Slum Dwellers International (SDI) is a network of community-based organizations of the urban poor in 33 countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Vusi Ntsuntsha is a community-led integrated housing development project which has been over twenty years in the making.
Keywords
Collaborators
Partners
Programs
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Katie Harris
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Melanie Quiroz
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Camila Yanzaguano
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Erica Levenson
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Joseph Roman
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Manuela Chedjou
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Co-creation
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Film & Photography
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Ethnographic Research
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Adobe Premiere
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Adobe InDesign
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Adobe Illustrator
Know Your City TV
International Field Program, Graduate Exchange for International Affairs Students at The New School
Collaboration
As I was based in the South African SDI Alliance, I worked intimately with the Know Your City TV team in South Africa. This is a group of six young individuals that are residents of several informal settlements across Cape Town, and use media to capture powerful stories of their community to create change.
Our Audience
Vusi Ntsuntsha is a community-led integrated housing development project which has been over twenty years in the making. Within the SA SDI Alliance the Vusi project serves as an example of how through community mobilization and participation those living in informal settlements can create a more vibrant and sustainable housing option for themselves. By collaborating with the Western Cape provincial government and local support NGOs, the Vusi Ntsuntsha project aims to shift the development process in favor of the urban poor by providing community members with quality, low-cost housing and sharing their process with others through local exchanges.
Documenting the Process
In order to document the community's process in developing the Vusi Ntsuntsha project, we attended various workshops, design meetings, working team meetings, enumeration workshops, and other youth events.
“We build the people before we build the house.”
-Rose Molokoane, Federation of the Rural
and Urban Poor (FEDUP)
Interviewing Community Members
A pivotal part of our project was to conduct interviews of the 'mamas' that are part of the Vusi project and have been waiting for this project to come to fruition for more than 20 years. Interviewing these individuals ensured that people's stories were not being lost, and also gave new momentum to the project. Community members living in Kanana and Khayelitsha, two large informal settlements of Cape Town, were visited in their homes and were interviewed Isi Xhosa, their native tongue, to collect their hopes and dreams for the Vusi Ntsuntsha project.
The following project was produced during the International Field Program, The New School, 2019, under the supervision of Achilles Kallergis.
Special thanks to Slum Dwellers International, Know Your City TV youth members, and the Vusi Ntsuntsha community members!
