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Urban informality, often viewed negatively, is not solely the product of the urban poor but also reflects the failure of formal systems to adapt. Informal workers, who make up about 61% of the global workforce, operate outside formal labor laws and significantly contribute to urban development. Understanding and harnessing community capitals are vital for sustainable urban development. This qualitative study explored the community capitals framework (CCF) in an urban context, addressing the limitations of quantitative data on CCF, which often overlooks critical social factors. This study team conducted in-depth interviews with 36 informal service providers from the education, healthcare, water, sanitation, and solid waste management sectors. Additionally, four local leaders from two urban informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya, were interviewed. The data from the transcripts were analyzed using thematic framework analysis, guided by the community capitals framework. We identified seven forms of community capital that benefit informal workers: natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built. Human capital, which focuses on skills and qualities, was the most frequently utilized, followed by social capital, which centers on connections and relationships. Next in importance were financial and political capital. Although cultural capital was the least implemented, it was described as important for reflecting community knowledge and traditions. Examples of these capitals in action included solid waste workers, manual pit emptiers, education providers, health workers, and water service providers, who all contributed to urban development and well-being through waste management, sanitation, education, healthcare, and access to clean water. In conclusion, service providers use community capitals as a planning tool to understand dynamics, refine strategies, and build trust for urban development. Each capital functions like a community bank account, containing strengths and opportunities. Although cultural capital was ranked last, it warrants further research to explore its drivers. Additional research is needed to fully grasp the relationships among the various capitals and their impact on service delivery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Catalyzing change and promoting sustainable cities in informal settlements and their residents requires an understanding of unmet needs and resilience among marginalized and vulnerable groups (MVGs). This is because needs identified on behalf of MVGs as "unmet" are sometimes not perceived as unmet, or even "meetable", and resilience strategies from above are often perceived as unsuitable by the MVGs. To the best of our knowledge, no study has used governance diaries to identify the unmet needs and resilience strategies of MVGs from their perspectives. As such, this study explored the unmet needs and resilience strategies of MVGs in informal settlements using governance diaries. This was a qualitative study using governance diaries with 24 participants from two informal settlements in Nairobi, Kenya. We used Maslow's hierarchy of needs for the framework analysis. We identified unmet needs related to physiology, safety, love and belonging, and self-esteem, in the order of the hierarchy. MVGs did not need the full satisfaction of a lower need to yearn for a higher one, and continue living despite their unmet needs. However, there were no self-actualization needs as the participants could not satisfy the lower level needs. The urban paradox reminds us that cities are not always beneficial for all. There is a continued need for holistic approaches to uncover the often hidden resilience strategies for achieving unmet needs. Our study identified behavioural and cognitive resilience strategies. As such, actors need to embrace and build on local resilience strategies in efforts to address the unmet needs of MVGs in pursuit of inclusive urbanization in Africa. The identification of unmet needs and resilience strategies adds to the literature, policy and practice on how and why residents and MVGs continue working and living in informal settlements despite a lack of or inadequate basic amenities. Our study findings imply that actors in informal settlements need to build on and re-build local resilience strategies in pursuit of inclusive and liveable urbanization in Africa, as unmet needs tend to increase with worsened marginality and vulnerability status. Beyond the resilience strategies adopted by MVGs, governments, service providers and caregivers should take more useful actions to prevent or reduce unmet needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Equitable health research requires actively engaging communities in producing new knowledge to advocate for their health needs. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) relies on the coproduction of contextual and grounded knowledge between researchers, programme implementers and community partners with the aim of catalysing action for change. Improving coproduction competencies can support research quality and validity. Yet, frameworks and guidance highlighting the ideal competencies and conditions needed for all research partners to contribute meaningfully and equitably are lacking. This paper aims to advance CBPR by laying out seven core competencies and conditions that can promote power sharing in knowledge production, application and dissemination at the individual, community, organisational and systems levels.Competencies were developed through an iterative process, that synthesised pre-existing literature and frameworks with a wide range of tacit knowledge from researchers, activists, implementation partners and community researchers from Bangladesh, India, Kenya, Sierra Leone and the UK.The seven core competencies and conditions are: (1) capacity to interpret and respond to individual and relational identity, connection, uniqueness and inequities; (2) ability of communities and partners to work in the most suitable, inclusive and synergistic way; (3) aptitude for generating safe and inclusive spaces for multidirectional knowledge and skills exchange that goes beyond the research focus; (4) expertise in democratic leadership and/or facilitation to balance competing priorities and ensure shared decision-making; (5) capacity to analyse readiness for action, successes and areas for improvements throughout the research process; (6) ability to instigate sustainable change processes within the political dimensions of systems, policies and practices using advocacy, lobbying or activism approaches and (7) skills to interpret and disseminate findings and outputs that are understandable, respectful and promote community ownership. We present core competency and condition areas, individual and collective expertise associated with competencies, likely outcomes, examples of activities and sources of evidence., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2024. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)

Safeguarding is rapidly rising up the international development agenda, yet literature on safeguarding in related research is limited. This paper shares processes and practice relating to safeguarding within an international research consortium (the ARISE hub, known as ARISE). ARISE aims to enhance accountability and improve the health and well-being of marginalised people living and working in informal urban spaces in low-income and middle-income countries (Bangladesh, India, Kenya and Sierra Leone). Our manuscript is divided into three key sections. We start by discussing the importance of safeguarding in global health research and consider how thinking about vulnerability as a relational concept (shaped by unequal power relations and structural violence) can help locate fluid and context specific safeguarding risks within broader social systems. We then discuss the different steps undertaken in ARISE to develop a shared approach to safeguarding: sharing institutional guidelines and practice; facilitating a participatory process to agree a working definition of safeguarding and joint understandings of vulnerabilities, risks and mitigation strategies and share experiences; developing action plans for safeguarding. This is followed by reflection on our key learnings including how safeguarding, ethics and health and safety concerns overlap; the challenges of referral and support for safeguarding concerns within frequently underserved informal urban spaces; and the importance of reflective practice and critical thinking about power, judgement and positionality and the ownership of the global narrative surrounding safeguarding. We finish by situating our learning within debates on decolonising science and argue for the importance of an iterative, ongoing learning journey that is critical, reflective and inclusive of vulnerable people., Competing Interests: Competing interests: None declared., (© Author(s) (or their employer(s)) 2020. Re-use permitted under CC BY. Published by BMJ.)