Community Organisation Resource Centre (Corc), Cape Town

CORC provides support to two different types of community networks. The first are networks of informal settlements that are mobilized around specific issues: normally, land, evictions, basic services and citizenship. The second are women’s collectives that are mobilized through savings. They try to bring a qualitative change to the way in which the organisations in the issue-based networks respond to the urbanization of poverty.

CORC supports issue-based networks in five metropolitan areas in the country and in one heavily populated rural district in the Eastern Cape. The communities in the urban networks come together to form the Informal Settlement Network (ISN). There are networks in the greater Johannesburg area, Ethekwini, Nelson Mandela Metro, Cape Town and Mangaung. The rural communities have come together to form the Alliance of Rural Communities (ARC).

CORC’s primary grassroots partner is the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP). This is a national network of women’s savings collectives that has mobilized extensively in informal settlements in all nine provinces. FEDUP has a loose alliance with another savings network known as Poor People’s Movement (PPM). PPM is most active in Namaqualand and the Northern Cape but has expanded into several other provinces.