Funding Partners
Kota Kita has worked with, and for, a number of international development agencies, private foundations and NGOs who have supported and funded our research and development activities.
Ford Foundation
The Ford Foundation has been supporting civil society initiatives in Indonesia for more than 60 years, promoting tolerance, social equity and environmental sustainability. The Ford Foundation has enabled Kota Kita to develop community mapping and participatory budgeting initiatives in many cities across the country.
UN-HABITAT
The United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-HABITAT) Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) in Fukuoka was one of the initial funders for the Solo community mapping project, Solo Kota Kita, and has since asked Kota Kita to partner with it to implement the Cities Development Strategies process in Solo, Pekalongan and Banjarmasin, a climate change vulnerability assessment in Pekalongan and post-earthquake community action planning in Padang.
UNDP
The United Nations Development Program has commissioned Kota Kita to implement several climate change vulnerability assessments in the cities of Makassar, Kupang and Kendari, as well as facilitate participatory urban risk management planning processes in each city.
UNEP
The United Nations Environment Program invited Kota Kita to partner with them, UNDP and UN-HABITAT to develop an urban climate change vulnerability assessment methodology focusing on critical ecosystems. The process was carried out in the city of Makassar and sought ways to combine urban and environmental planning strategies to boost climate change resilience.
The Asia Foundation
The Asia Foundation works across Asia to promote good governance. The Asia Foundation Mongolia asked Kota Kita to partner with them to support the government of the City of Ulaanbaatar on a community mapping initiative of the unplanned Ger districts of the city. Kota Kita also hosted two Mongolian delegations in Solo, Jakarta, and Yogyakarta to learn about urban governance policies.
Cities Development Initiative for Asia (CDIA)
The Cities Development Initiative for Asia commissioned Kota Kita to carry out an in-depth study of the impact of public transportation projects on urban poor communities in Solo, Yogyakarta, and Palembang. The research focused upon drivers and riders of becak, angkot and ojek, all informal modes of public transportation, and resulted in the creation of a publication and a regional workshop that Kota Kita helped facilitate.
Mercy Corps Indonesia
Mercy Corps Indonesia asked Kota Kita to carry out community-based vulnerability assessments in two cities, Semarang and Bandar Lampung, in order to support their comprehensive climate change resilience strategies in those cities under the Asian Cities Climate Change Resilience Network (ACCCRN) initiative.
The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED)
IIED is an independent policy research institute, or think tank, whose stated mission is to "build a fairer, more sustainable world, using evidence, action and influence in partnership with others.” IIED has supported two research studies by Kota Kita about urban resilience policies and methodological approaches to vulnerability assessments.
USAID – SERASI
The USAID-funded SERASI program was a post-conflict peacebuilding and governance project. SERASI helped support Kota Kita’s city-wide participatory mapping project, Solo Kota Kita, in 2010.
USAID – CCRD
The USAID-funded Climate Change Resilient Development (CCRD) was a global, four-year project to support climate change adaptation in 33 countries. CCRD funded a grant that allowed Kota Kita to conduct a climate change vulnerability assessment of the city of Manado and build the capacity of government officials and academicians in the city to build resilience to climate change.
AECOM
AECOM is an international architecture, engineering and planning firm that hosts Urban SOS, an annual design competition for students. In 2011, a team made up of two urban planning students from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology interning at Kota Kita and two staff members won the competition with an entry entitled Firm Foundation. The $25,000 prize was awarded to implement the winning design, resulting in a participatory design-and-build process with community members in the city of Banjarmasin.
AusAID – Indonesia Infrastructure Initiative (IndII)
The AusAID-funded Indonesia Infrastructure Initiative (IndII) is supporting Kota Kita in the development of research and a participatory community monitoring tool that makes the planning and implementation of infrastructure projects more transparent.
VINNOVA
Vinova is the Swedish Government’s innovations agency. Their mission is to promote sustainable growth by improving the conditions for innovation. They are collaborating with Living Cities and Kota Kita to fund research on promoting bicycling in over thirty developing countries for women and girls, with Solo serving as one of their strategic pilot sites.
The Giles Family
The Giles Family is dedicated to empowering promising social development initiatives throughout the world, offering strategic guidance and financial support to Room to Read and Direct Relief, widely recognized development organizations that work globally. They have generously supported Kota Kita in our capacity building efforts, strategic initiatives and organizational strengthening.
Collaboration Partners
The following organizations, universities, think tanks and companies have collaborated with Kota Kita on a range of activities, projects and research initiatives. Collaborators work with Kota Kita exchanging ideas and technical knowledge to come up with innovative solutions to urban problems.
Living Cities
Living Cities is a Swedish-based non-profit corporation that works towards developing innovative solutions for inclusive, resilient and living cities around the world. They specialize in creating people-focused and people-friendly ways to improve cities and make them more sustainable. Living Cities is collaborating with Kota Kita to implement a pilot project in Solo that will support the empowerment of women to ride bicycles and promote mobility through pro-bicycling policies.
University of Pennsylvania
The University of Pennsylvania has been collaborating with Kota Kita on research into urban transportation, in particular in the field of informal transport and improving mobility, since 2011. Through this partnership Kota Kita is supporting research into transportation systems, infrastructure and policies that are being conducted in Solo and other cities in Indonesia. It also gives UPenn students the opportunity to spend summers with Kota Kita to undertake an internship.
Urban Launchpad
Urban Launchpad is a firm based in San Francisco that develops and deploys digital innovations to solve a range of urban problems in cities throughout the world. They’re dedicated to partnering with local organizations in some of the world’s least livable cities, where even a few small gestures can make a huge improvement.
Blink_Tag Inc.
Blink_Tag Inc. is a company based in San Francisco dedicated to developing mapping and database applications for cities. Blink_Tag has partnered with Kota Kita for over five years, most notably in the development of our first project, Solo Kota Kita, a city-wide database and map of the city.
Pacific Institute
The Pacific Institute is an US-based non-profit research institute created in 1987 to provide independent research and policy analysis on issues of development, environment and security, with a particular focus on global and regional freshwater issues. The Pacific Institute and Kota Kita have teamed up to implement WATER SMS, a crowd-sourced information gathering approach in the cities of Makassar and Malang, whose objective is to improve governance and accountability in the water sector.
Cornell University
Cornell University in the US has been collaborating with Kota Kita since 2013 to educate students through a semester-long engagement with the city of Solo on a variety of urban issues. In 2013 and 2014, Cornell students visited Solo’s riverbank communities to conduct fieldwork and have presented their findings to government officials and community leaders. Kota Kita’s partnership with Cornell facilitates the exchange of information, provides opportunities for internships and creates co-produced research publications.
National University of Singapore
The National University of Singapore, through the Institute of Water Policy, collaborates with Kota Kita to research participatory approaches to urban water delivery and management. The joint research initiative, now in its second phase, will provide more information to improve citizen participation in formulation of more
Center for Participatory Planning (P5)
The Center for Participatory Planning (P5) at the Universitas Diponegoro in the Indonesian city of Semarang is a research and development organization that is part of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning. They have collaborated with Kota Kita on a number of activities, including training government officials about climate change in Manado, and coming up with strategic development plans for the cities of Pekalongan, Solo and Banjarmasin through the Cities Development Strategies project.
Transparent Chennai
Transparent Chennai is a think-tank, based in India’s Chennai city, that aggregates, creates and disseminates data and research about important civic issues facing Chennai, including those issues faced by the poor. Transparent Chennai is a like-minded organization to Kota Kita in its approach to using maps and data, and making information available to communities to empower them to advocate for better urban development and policies.
Casa Fluminense
Casa Fluminense is a civil society organization based in Brazil dedicated to the formulation of progressive urban policies and activities for the metropolitan region of Rio de Janeiro. Kota Kita and Casa Fluminense both promote public access to urban data and collective discussion concerning socially just and participatory urban policies.
Development Workshop Angola
Development Workshop (DW) has been working in Angola on a range of human settlements issues since 1981 supporting the emerging Angolan civil society and the process of local government decentralisation, while working closely with local community organizations. Kota Kita has helped DW to create municipal profiles for the capital, Luanda, and participatory planning tools similar to Solo’s Mini-Atlases for the project Solo Kota Kita.
Institute of Resource Governance and Social Change
The Institute of Resource Governance and Social Change (IRGSC) is a Kupang-based policy research institute and think tank whose mission is to produce knowledge, and inspire policy innovation and change, principally in the eastern region of Indonesia. Kota Kita is working with IRGSC to research methods of assessing social and physical vulnerability to climate change in a number of cities across Indonesia.
Strategic Alliance for Poverty Alleviation
The Strategic Alliance for Poverty Alleviation (SAPA) is a consortium including the Ministry of Welfare, various local governments and a network of civil society organizations working together to reduce poverty in Indonesia. Kota Kita has provided maps and facilitation support to assist in identifying pockets of urban poverty and advocate for better planning in those areas.
KUPAS
KUPAS (Koalisi untuk Pemberdayaan Masyarakat Sipil) is a local NGO coalition based in Makassar dedicated to empowering civil society groups. They work together with local government to encourage participation in local development planning through the online musrenbang process. Kota Kita supported KUPAS in the formulation of neighborhood maps and data collection to assist their work.
