Platform of Community Artisans and Architects (POCAA) is a group of people in Bangladesh that aims to create a platform for community-led architecture. POCAA is active with different communities through community mapping as a tool. It is linked with Community Architects Network (CAN) since its inception.

Currently few Community Architects of POCAA are working in Pro-poor Slum Integration Project (PPSIP), a joint effort mainly by World Bank, National Housing Authority (NHA) and BRAC University. The objective of this project is to develop city-wide housing process with/by/for the low-income communities.

The team is currently visiting and meeting different city authorities and the low-income communities to assess their readiness for initiating city-wide community-led housing process. During the visits, the team is meeting with all the relevant city authorities like the Mayor, District Commissioner, the town manager from the UPPR project and community leaders to assess the willingness of the city authorities and the networking between the communities around the city. Based on feedback from the city authorities and community leaders, the team then visits some of the potential communities in the city to assess the willingness of community.

After the team finishes visiting all the towns, criteria’s for the town selection will be set. Based on that, the towns will be selected for the pilot projects. Then again, the team will go back to the selected towns to start the process of community selection at the second phase.