Building resilience in informal coastal settlements

Cartagena, Colombia

Organisation: Architecture Sans Frontieres - UK

Partners: Foundation for Multidimensional Education, FEM and ASOCOC a grassroots association of 22 coastal Afro-Colombian communities

Years: 2014-16

My role: Co-founder and coordinator of the Resilience by Design programme hosting this project.

Project management, partnership building, design of participatory methodologies and co-facilitation of workshops involving Afro-colombian communities living in two fragile coastal settlements in Cartagena. Capacity building and development of action plans in collaboration with FEM.

The reports and local territorial plan produced as part of the project (2014-16) were utilised for negotiation and advocacy strategies, and in 2017 the community became the first Afro-Colombian group to be granted its Collective Land Title in the Caribbean region of Colombia based on a participatory planning process.