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 proces