Registration Details

Shelter Associates NGO Organization Members

Shelter Associates Source Funds

Contact details

Shelter Associates Key Issues and Operational Areas, Major Activiities & Achivements

Operational Districts: Pune, Thane, Mumbai Suburban, Kolhapur

Operational States: MAHARASHTRA

AchieveMents: Founded in 1993, Shelter Associates is an NGO with major activities in the following areas: housing for the urban poor, urban sanitation, poverty mapping (using GIS and remote sensing technology), research and documentation, advocacy for the urban poor, and community mobilization. Shelter Associates works closely with Baandhani, an informal CBO of slum dwellers and the backbone of Shelter’s community mobilization effort. Baandhani is involved in all of Shelter’s activities. SA approaches these projects through a holistic lens of city-planning. Shelter believes in creating sustainable and replicable models. Planning for the urban poor must be integrated with mainstream city planning to prevent duplication of activities and to ensure optimum utilization and amalgamation of existing and planned projects and resources. SA ensures that national programs truly reach the poor, working with local, state, and central government bodies to be sure that all IHSDP projects directly serve them. A more recent example of this is the IHSDP project under the JNNURM program being implemented in Sangli. SA has also participated in the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (national program) providing toilets for the urban poor. SA focuses on advocacy in order to guarantee that plans are directly converted into policies. In this way, a database is being created that locally positions the poor on city maps, providing them with visibility and recognition as legitimate citizens of their cities and greater nation. Shelter Associates has more recently focused its efforts in the smaller cities and Maharashtra because it is in these locations that a holistic approach works best. The incentive is to prevent these cities from reaching the scale of problems which have plagued the larger cities of Mumbai, Pune, and other metros of India. Shelter’s work has been recognized by UNCHS (United Nations Center for Human Settlements) as one of the Good Practices. Shelter’s holistic approach to using IHSDP funds to create a slum-free city in Sangli has been adopted in the Rajiv Gandhi Awas Yojana. Additionally, Shelter Associates Director Pratima Joshi has received an Ashoka Global Fellowship and has been featured in the BBC’s Asia Week. She was distinguished through the Singapore Strait Times’ “New Asian Heroes”, recognizing individuals in Asia who are making a difference in society.