Sheela Patel, Founder and Director of the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres

Sheela Patel founded SPARC in Bombay in 1984. Since then, SPARC has formed an alliance with The National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) of India and Mahila Milan, a federation of women's collectives in India, to promote empowerment of slum dwellers throughout India.

SPARC is a grassroots NGO working on urban housing issues, which aims to empower slum dwellers through community based, community led and community focused organizational processes. One of the most important aspects of SPARC’s work is how it collaborates with local grass roots groups, professionals and government agencies to build support for housing micro-credit programmes for pavement dwellers, support related research, and implementation of relevant policy initiatives. Some of SPARC’s salient implementation activities are community mapping, building information archives and providing education and training to the urban poor. SPARC measures its own effectiveness through the extent to which it can mobilize other people and groups rather than through its own growth as an organization.

SPARC initially concentrated on women pavement dwellers and has expanded its work to resettlement colonies, initiating projects in housing construction and sanitation, establishing links with the poor in Asian and Latin American cities, and finally initiating dialogue with bilateral and multilateral agencies on alliance developing and community participation strategies.