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“With savings we can do wonders”: a Manchester-Muungano exchange

In June 2018, six Greater Manchester residents went on a learning exchange visit to Muungano Wa Wanavijiji (the Kenyan Slum Dwellers Federation) in Nairobi as part of the Realising Just Cities project: ‘Community-led organising: Seeing the inner city from the South’. In the spirit of experience sharing and knowledge exchange, the Greater Manchester team decided they would like to share some extracts from their peer-to-peer interviews and a final joint reflection with a wider audience. Some background information precedes these reflections.

When you get a front door...leave it open

“It’s all about trust” said Marie Hampshire, two days into a week-long community exchange with members of the South African Alliance in July 2017, a grassroots movement of women-led savings schemes affiliated to Slum/Shack Dwellers International or SDI. Marie is a member of Mums Mart, a women’s group from Benchill in the British city of Manchester that brings low-income families together around food, monthly markets and, most recently, a new kind of savings scheme.