Planact has been focused on citizen engagment and development, community agency building, systems change and policy at the local government level for 39 years. Planact is a resource for marginalised and impoverished communities as well as an institution for experimentation, debate and professional development.

Planact’s work is located within the state-civil society interface, in vulnerable underserved communities, specifically in informal settlements, engaged in improving delivery of municipal basic services delivery, supporting integrative settlement upgrading, livelihoods, and creating active citizenry to support these outcomes.

We work with community structures and groupings to support improved civic participation, equipping communities to relate in more productive and just ways with local government systems and structures, to promote shared accountability for local development outcomes. Planact’s vision necessarily requires that all groups within a community experience improved services and living conditions as a result of our engagement and capacity enhancement and support. We have noted over the years that the youngest community members are often invisible in community development processes, their voices are not heard, their specialised needs are not served. Planact has no expertise in child-centred engagement and advocacy, and we required to partner with organisations with expertise and experience working with children, and structures and systems and processes that serve children.

The partnership between Planact and Asidlale is founded on mutual reliance. Asidlale requires access to capacitated and integrated community leadership structures in informal settlements, in order to integrate children as a priority into the local development agenda. Planact requires partners with expertise on children’s needs, children’s processes, children’s voices, in order to ensure we are reaching a critical grouping traditionally excluded from the benefits of our work.