How to use this toolkit?

The toolkit is designed so that Toolbox 1 provides a basis for understanding contexts and Toolboxes 2, 3 and 4 offer materials and specific tools to act on these contexts towards social development. The reader can dip in and out of the toolboxes, draw inspiration and adapt them as required by the particular context. The toolkit should not be seen as a fixed recipe to duplicate bottom-up social development as found in favela communities but as a flexible resource that contains a menu of options for working across the globe.

A list of references and two annexes are provided at the end of the document. Annex 1 contains a table with the action points suggested within each tool and demonstrates how they map across tools. Annex 2 offers suggestions for those looking into facilitating workshops and training in their communities, and discusses how workshop activities can be implemented in a one-day workshop.

The IBGE (Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics) gives the following definition of favelas:

“Favelas are defined as subnormal urban agglomerates, irregular settlements in areas considered inappropriate for urbanization, such as the steep hillsides of Rio’s mountains: a set constituted by at least 51 housing units (shacks, small houses, etc.) occupying – or having occupied – till recently, land owned by a third party, private or public); disposed in general in a disordered and dense form, and lacking in their majority, essential services, public and private.”

(IBGE, 2011)