Award for GLTN Implementing Partner Pamoja Trust! Congratulations!

We are pleased to share that Pamoja Trust, one of the Global Land Tool Network’s (GLTN) implementing partners, has been awarded a USD 50,000 grant under the ‘Secure Tenure in African Cities: Micro Funds for Community Innovation initiative’. This is a great achievement for Pamoja who work tirelessly to improve the lives of the most poor and vulnerable, particularly those living in slums and informal settlements. Funded by Cities Alliance member Omidyar Network, the micro funds award for community innovation initiative aims at addressing the connection between the issue of land tenure, Africa’s growing young population, and its capacity to innovate and deploy modern technologies. Cities Alliance rolled out the call for funding to support community organisations working on innovative ways to achieve tenure security, land and property rights in African cities in March, earlier this year.

County Government of Mombasa officials being taken through the Kwa Bulo map by Pamoja Trust staff during the community data verification exercise

Pamoja Trust, a Nairobi based non- profit organization that seeks to promote access to land, shelter and basic services for the urban poor working closely with Muungano wa Wanavijiji, - a federation of households living in informal settlements across the country- has been implementing GLTN’s Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) since 2012. STDM is used to better understand land tenure relationships and claims in Kenya, where systems of ownership and access to land are multiple, often overlapping and contested. The STDM is a pro-poor, gender responsive, participatory and affordable land information system for capturing person/s to land relationships cognizant of the land rights continuum. It was developed by GLTN with the support of UN-Habitat. STDM is embedded on an open source Geographical Information Systems (GIS) platform; Quantum Geographical Information Systems (QGIS) and on the ISO Standard Land Administration Domain Model which is supported by many professional organizations and civil society organizations. It supports all forms of land rights and claims, (formal, intermediate and non-formal). With this award, Pamoja Trust aims to upscale the use of STDM and promote tenure security enhancement in informal settlements in Nairobi and Mombasa counties Kenya. The project, titled ‘Upscaling the Social Tenure Domain Model (STDM) to Promote Integrated and Sustainable Urban Land Use’, will build on STDM’s successes in Kenya by scaling up and institutionalizing the tool as an inclusive, gender-responsive and fit-for-purpose approach to data collection that can help all stakeholders improve tenure security. It will engage all levels of government in Kenya: The National level - pushing for the adoption of STDM by government agencies towards responsive land policies and; the County level (Nairobi and Mombasa) - to consolidate previous experiences with STDM and raise its profile for implementation in other parts of Kenya. At the community level, the project aims to expand the use of STDM to register land rights and advocate for tenure regularization, with an emphasis on the community of Mashimoni, Mathare No. 10. settlement. This award shows a strong recognition of innovative technologies to improve land governance and recognizes the efforts of NGO’s like Pamoja Trust who, in collaboration with key partners like GLTN, can make a genuine difference to people’s lives. We congratulate Pamoja trust on their achievement and wish them all the very best with the project roll out and upscaling efforts in Kenya. For more information about: Pamoja Trust, go to: https://www.pamojatrust.org/ GLTN, go to: https://gltn.net/ STDM, go to: https://stdm.gltn.net/