Sheela Patel | |
|---|---|
 Patel speaking at the 2011 Opening Plenary of World Water Week | |
| Born | 1952 (age 70–71) |
| Alma mater | Tata Institute of Social Sciences |
Sheela Patel (born 1952) is an activist and academic involved with people living in slums and shanty towns.
In 1974, Patel received her Masters in Social Work from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in Mumbai. She was then involved with a community centre called the Nagpada Neighbourhood House. [1]
With Prema Gopalan, Patel is the founding director of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), which she set up in Mumbai in 1984 as an advocacy group for the pavement dwellers of Mumbai. SPARC continues to this day to play a major role in the politics of slum development in India and throughout the Third World. [2] In 2000, SPARC was the recipient of the United Nations Human Settlement Award. [1]
Patel works closely with the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) and Mahila Milan, two community-based groups working on with the poor in Indian cities. She worked in the National Technical Advisory Group (NTAG) for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM).
She has founded the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, the Asian Women and Shelter Network and Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP), an organisation that works with women's collectives in more than 600 villages in Maharashtra. [1]
Patel is also one of the founders of Slum Dwellers International, a network of community-based organisations in 33 countries spanning Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean.
2011: Padma Shri award, the fourth highest civilian honor in India. [3]
2009: David Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award [1]
A slum is a highly populated urban residential area consisting of densely packed housing units of weak build quality and often associated with poverty. The infrastructure in slums is often deteriorated or incomplete, and they are primarily inhabited by impoverished people. Although slums are usually located in urban areas, in some countries they can be located in suburban areas where housing quality is low and living conditions are poor. While slums differ in size and other characteristics, most lack reliable sanitation services, supply of clean water, reliable electricity, law enforcement, and other basic services. Slum residences vary from shanty houses to professionally built dwellings which, because of poor-quality construction or lack of basic maintenance, have deteriorated.
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Mahila Milan is a self-organised, decentralised collective of female pavement dwellers in Bombay. The group works with issues such as housing, sanitation, and grassroots lending schemes. It aims at gaining women equal recognition for improvement of their communities, while indulging in important decision making activities. The loans granted by the group to its members in times of need, are sanctioned in the name of the woman of the house.
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