This seminar report is about the Sinpa programme. Therefore a brief explanation of the objectives and project history is provided in this chapter to serve as background information for what is to follow. Objectives of the SINPA programme The overall goal of the SINPA programme is to help implement National Plans of Action and the Habitat Agenda by building sustainable local capacity for effective planning and management of urban development. More concretely, the programme aims to assist local government and its partners in capacity building for action in the broad areas of housing, local environmental management and participative planning processes and partnerships relating to these subjects. It especially focuses on the challenges of improving access to services and better environment for the urban poor, with particular regard to gender issues. The broad objectives of the programme are: • to stimulate the development of local capacity building strategies; • to stimulate selected local and national capacity building institutions to become more responsive to needs and to enhance quality of performance; • to stimulate urban stakeholders to learn from relevant past and ongoing experience with implementing urban development policy and projects; • to improve understanding and communication of experience relevant to needs of city development in the linked areas of housing, environmental management, participative planning and partnerships. SINPA aims to achieve these objectives by helping to bring local development partners and capacity building institutions together so as to improve capacity in a manner that will be sustainable locally. The programme is structured in a core programme, which provides co-ordination, information inputs, linkage and dissemination, and three country programmes that are developed locally in response to local issues. The country programmes are being implemented in secondary cities in Bangladesh, Bolivia and Zambia. The SINPA programme adopts a process

Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
hdl.handle.net/1765/32235
SINPA Papers
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)

Herzog, A., van den Dool, L., Davidson, F., & Skinner, R. (2001). Process, politics and
participation:
Experiences with strategies for local
capacity building (No. IHS SINPA 19). SINPA Papers. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/1765/32235