Day 16: Friday 23 September - Participatory Approach to Safe Shelter Awareness (PASSA)

Yesterday I talked about the different tools and mechanisms available during the planning phase to assist the decision-making process prior to the commencement of a shelter project. To make well-informed decisions on the best approach to repair and reconstruction, information is required both on the state of the target area and the inhabitants that live there. Engineers and architects are also important at this stage so they can provide technical suggestions on how to construct and retrofit effectively and safely in seismically-active areas.

To increase the likelihood of a successful shelter project it is equally as important to acquire input and agreement from the beneficiaries themselves. That is why every step of the process in Haiti is being overseen and ultimately signed-off by the community themselves. To assist the participatory process, the IFRC together with British Red Cross have created an approach called PASSA (Participatory Approach to Safe Shelter Awareness).

PASSA is a participatory tool and knowledge-sharing technique that allows communities to improve their living environment, build safer shelters and design better settlements. A group of community representatives are selected from across the community and asked to attend and participate in a series of 8 meetings that first identify and prioritize key problems in the community and then develop suitable solutions for them. The meetings result in the completion of a community action plan.

The 8-steps of PASSA are as follows:

1. Historical profile: to understand the vulnerability of the community through its most important past events

2. Frequency and impact of hazards: to identify, analyse and agree on the most important shelter hazards using drawings

3. Community mapping and visiting: to map the settlement's main infrastructure and identify both safe and unsafe shelter conditions

4. Safe and unsafe shelter: to identify what can be done to make shelter safer in the community

5. Options for solutions: study how feasible and efficient the safe shelter options are. Define best solutions

6. Planning for change: to develop a community action plan to improve shelter safety

7. Problem box: to think about possible problems in implementing the plan and propose steps to overcoming them

8. Monitoring: to agree on the system for monitoring progress. To plan what to check, how often and who is in charge

Community Participation and Maps
I was quite excited when I saw that mapping formed step 3 of the PASSA programme. Maps can be extremely important tools in any planning process not only to visualise and analyse spatial information but also as data collection tools. I am fortunate that my work with the Red Cross coincides with the community mapping stage of PASSA and that the Red Cross are keen for me to help in the process in any way I can.

The main aim of the PASSA mapping exercise is to get the community to think about the space they live in by creating their own maps and spatial representations of Delmas 19. It is hoped that the results will then provide a useful insight into how the community perceive the space around them.

In the UK many of us take for granted our perception of space and our ability to read maps. We are lucky that maps can be found and purchased for almost anywhere and that we are often exposed to maps from an early age. In recent years the advent of Google Earth and other on-line mapping facilities has further advanced our exposure to spatial data and made satellite and aerial imagery available to all with a computer and an internet connection.

A detailed plan or map of Delmas 19 however does not exist. The best freely-available maps of Port-au-Prince only contain key streets and buildings. As a result, the inhabitants of Delmas 19 have never seen a map or plan of their community, so when asked to map their community what is produced is a rather abstract perception of their space. The maps are still very legible though and contain key features that are positioned in the correct positions relative to each other linked by a series of corridors:
After these maps were produced they were given to a local artist who worked with the community to produce a more 'realistic' spatial representation of the area. The final map contains building blocks with the names of owners, as well as corridors, churches and other key facilities.
Today we are transferring the artist's final map onto canvas which will then be used at different stages of the PASSA process. The first step is to decide which features to map and to devise a clear legend and colour-scheme for each of the main features: grey for corridors, blue for transitional shelters, black for the canal etc. The process of actually creating the map then helps the community to understand the layout and content of their community.

Throughout the session we provide satellite imagery and maps as prompts for discussion and to give the participants something they can compare their own map against. It seems that the satellite imagery is difficult for most participants to interpret without guidance, but that the GIS map of building plots is used frequently as reference material.
At the end of the session we discuss the different ways the map could be used by the community when it is finished. They suggest that we can use it to identify problem areas and to map areas of progress during construction. The map will be finalised on Wednesday.