Who We Are?

Who we are:

The Philippine Action for Community-Led Shelter Initiatives, Inc. (PACSII) is a non-profit and non-stock NGO duly registered on 4 July 2002 with the Philippine Security and Exchange Commission (SEC).

PACSII serves as the intermediary support institution to the Homeless Peoples Federation Philippines Inc. (HPFPI), a national federation of community associations and savers, pursuing community-led housing and upgrading processes. It is at present the legal holder of HPFPI projects and provides professional support in the areas of research, documentation and reporting, fund sourcing and legal affairs to the federation.

PACSII was founded as a concrete response to the situation of poverty and destitution of the homeless people living around the open dumpsite in Payatas,  Quezon City in 2002. This video describes this whole experience and process of building the communities of the urban poor. The late Fr. Norberto Carcellar, CM was given an international award “OPUS PRIZE” on November 8, 2007 for his work with the homeless people.  

what we stand for

VISION

PACSII envisions the transformation of urban poor and informal settler communities into secure, safe, resilient, self-determining and inclusive urban communities with sustainable economic and ecological development.  With improved security of tenure and resilience to climate and social hazards and risks, the urban poor families and communities have greater voice and participation in inclusive urban development as they work for and benefit from the development of their local economies and natural environments.

MISSION

PACSII works with HPFPI communities and harnesses networked support in building capacities and promoting community-led processes for the attainment of security of tenure and sustainable communities.

STRATEGY

PACSII’s strategy to implement its vision and objectives is to bring its partners, especially HPFPI members, to an empowerment state, that is, from being vulnerable and marginalized households and communities to becoming self-governing communities that are safe, inclusive, resilient and sustainable, guided by the empowerment process (entry, consolidation, and withdrawal).

OBJECTIVES

To build capacities of urban poor communities in organizational development and project management 

To empower the urban poor communities to do mapping and environmental scanning 

To do research, documentation and advocacy in promoting the dignity and rights of the urban poor  

To harness network support for Homeless people

To provide supervision and mentoring to the urban poor and their community-led initiatives

To mobilize fund and build up institutional resources  for the Homeless

To build own institutional capacity (institution building/sustainability)

Learn how we started as an organization

In 1998, with the formation of the HPFPI, Fr. Norberto “Bebot” Carcellar, CM saw the need to shift focus from social development programs to land and housing and security of tenure issues affecting the poor. Fr. Bebot as parish priest in Barangay Payatas, Quezon City, began to organize urban poor communities around the Payatas dumpsite area, the largest open dumpsite in the country. He realized the great potential of self-help groups of waste-pickers and other informally employed residents of Payatas who are mobilizing savings and their ranks to address their own problems of land, housing, health and livelihood. Fr. Bebot founded PACSII which to this day, advocates the community-led development process, that is, giving space to poor communities to manage their own development.

 

Our undertakings

  • Direct technical support to HPFPI in financial management, bookkeeping, legal assistance, organizational development and enterprise development.
  • Facilitating HPFPI in community and citywide mapping and enumeration, upgrading, disaster risk reduction and management, learning exchanges and forums, enterprise and livelihood development, and community building.
  • Networking with local and national government units or agencies and private sectors.
  • Contract holder for federation building resources.
  • Advisory and project/contract management.
  • Secretariat of the Philippine Alliance.