Date Published:
June 19, 2017, 10:41 a.m.
The Centre for Urban and Regional Excellence (CURE) is a development non-governmental organization. It collaborates with slum communities and local governments to implement processes of slum upgrading and sustainable poverty reduction. Specifically, CURE mobilizes low-income communities to plan and implement innovative solutions that will improve the quality of their living.
Our mission is to achieve three goals; reconnected urban societies that take rightful decisions to ensure sustainable urban development; strengthened local agencies with capacities for participatory community development, and real evidence built from the ground up for effective service delivery.
CURE’s strength is in its communitarian approach. We believe that community participation is a powerful organizing ideal that fosters sustainable development in and of communities and can contribute to local development planning and design. We facilitate processes that enable people to come together, recognize their problems, articulate their needs and concerns, formulate shared goals and take collective decisions. We believe in a community’s wisdom.
CURE’ work focuses on building resilient communities and cities. It helps cities with the preparation of citywide slum upgrading and environmental resilience plans. The plans are designed to do three things; level people up – ensure equality; connect all the dots – ensure comprehensive and sustainable ecological solutions; and integrate people within the city’s fabric – ensure inclusive development.
CURE believes all people are equal and must get access to an equal level of services – taps and toilets at home to live a life with dignity and to sustainably reduce poverty. CURE has set up several integrative models of sustainable urban development where the poor have been enabled to build home toilets and houses, connect to potable drinking water, get access to solid waste management services, harvest rain water and be water resilient and improve their living environments.
SANMAN is a SMART GIS based tool for city sanitation planning. It has been developed in partnership with East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC). The geo-spatial tool helps the Corporation in implementing its mandate under the Swachh Bharat Mission.
Specifically, with the help of SanMan, EDMC now can come up with effective investment and management strategies to manage it’s ‘solid waste’ and ‘public toilets’. The tool highlights areas that are not covered with adequate services as per norms. It also shows suitable locations to make new public toilets, waste collection and disposal points and waste collection routes. This enables EDMC to use its resources to efficiently fill these gaps and keep track of its progress.
One of the key features of the tool is its ease of modifications and use in different contexts. Till date the tool has been successfully replicated for NOIDA Authority to assess the gaps in solid waste collection and disposal system; for North Delhi Municipal Corporation to assess gaps to increase accessibility of the ‘Public Urinals’; and for Agra Municipal Corporation to make solid waste plan for its Tajganj area.The tool will also suit Municipal bodies of Rourkela, Mathura and Dharamshala to plan their sanitation services.
Agra was once abundant of water. It had the River Yamuna which was the axis along which the city grew. Several wells, tanks, pokhars and baolis were built to that ensure there is ample water for its people and their various living and livelihood needs, and ensured that the river was never overburdened and continued to flow.
Deterioration of Agra’s Water Ecology began during British Raj, when sweeping socio economic and political changes resulted in a huge influx of migrant population. Poor planning, change of land use from residential to industrial along the riverfront and inadequate infrastructure; caused the shift in the nature of supply and management of the resource. Community ownership of the river and its resources was lost; and so was the traditional wisdom and knowledge on water resource management.
With the launch of Mukhaymantri Jal Bachao Abhiyaan, CURE is helping ‘Agra Nagar Nigam’ to transform Agra into the water resilient city, that it once was. It is revitalizing its traditional hydrological wisdom and infrastructure and the natural ecological systems in partnership with people and key stakeholders. Specifically, it will promote water conservation, rainwater harvesting, groundwater recharge and treatment and reuse of wastewater.
It is working on three rain water harvesting structures with a collective holding capacity of 2.5 lac litres of rainwater at three community sites in ‘Tajganj‘.
