Rapid assessment procedures in urban communities: the experience of the Habitat and Health Project in Barrio San Jorge, Argentine.

ARROSSI, S.

Londres

Workshop; International Workshop on “The use of participatory approaches and methods in urban areas”; 1995

IIED-Europe

San Jorge is a poor squatter settlement of about 2,300 inhabitants in the District of San Fernando (Metropolitan Region of Greater Buenos Aires) in an area of extremely degraded environmental conditions. The zone is liable to flooding, the barrio is bordered by a highly contaminated river (considered to be an open sewer), and two gullies into which flow sewer-water and all kinds of refuse. The quality of infrastructure is very poor and drainage services do not exist. More than two-fifths of the population are illegally connected to the public water supply; others obtain water through the intermittent distribution by municipal water tankers or through public standpipes installed in some streets of the barrio (Hardoy and Hardoy, 1991). In all cases however, the supply is not continuous, water being available only during some hours of the day. The barrio is divided into two sections: the New Barrio and the Old Barrio. The latter lies on land belonging to eight private landlords while the newer section lies on public land. However, there have been no attempts to expel the inhabitants. In September 1992, IIED-LA began the implementation of the Habitat and Health Project in Barrio San Jorge, with financial assistance from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The project integrated three kinds of activities: 1) A participatory diagnosis of the main habitat and health problems in the community. This diagnosis was the basis for deciding on; 2) A community activity (i.e. specific project) on habitat, chosen jointly through participation between project team members and the inhabitants, to both illustrate the link between habitat and the population's health level and to promote improvements in living conditions related to these two factors; 3) An evaluation process of both the results achieved and the methods used, continued throughout the project. This article describes how three preliminary focus groups were ‘piloted’, to test participatory methodologies on a small scale. The aim of the focus groups was to explore a method of working which would enable us to get to know the people’s perspectives on the main health and habitat problems of the barrio, thus enabling joint progress in the design and implementation of social initiatives. The results of this initiative helped to restructure the use of participatory methodologies in the second stage of the project. There was some concern that the health-care system (local, provincial and national) did not reflect the community’s priorities. Therefore the objective was to diagnose the main health and habitat problems of the barrio with the community, and outline and discuss with the inhabitants joint activities and new ways of working together. Another objective of the exercise was to identify local facilitators with whom to work to resolve these problems. The aim of this article is to show the main lessons emerging from the use of a focus group methodology in a low income urban community.