Lessons from CODI on co-production

Abstract

Somsook Boonyabancha, former director of CODI (the Community Organizations Development Institute in Thailand) and now an advisor to the CODI board and chairperson of the Baan Mankong Program Committee, reflects on the evolution of CODI, the management of its fund, and the communitydriven activities it has supported since 1992. The paper explains how substantial and large-scale changes can be brought about in the lives of the poor by supporting a community-driven process that opens space for negotiation and collaboration with government and other partners on housing and other aspects of community development. It describes the transitions that have had to be managed, as both the community networks and the support institution have navigated various challenges and opportunities. A centrepiece of this co-production is the Baan Mankong Program, which represents a dramatic change in the role of government-from a provider of housing to facilitator of community-driven local housing co-production. KeywOrDs Baan Mankong / co-production / CODI / Thailand / urban housing I. IntrODuCtIOn Since the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI) in Thailand was set up in 1992, it has been engaged in continuous learning about how substantial change in the lives of the poor can be brought about through a process that opens space for poor communities to work with their local governments and other public and private stakeholders to deliver various development goods. Although co-production, as a term and a concept, was not familiar in Thai development until decades later, CODI's work has manifested the principles of co-production all along, most notably in the delivery of housing-that toughest and most complex of public goods. But the co-production mechanisms CODI helped build have also addressed and linked together many other dimensions of poverty.

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