Somsook Boonyabancha, chairperson of Asian Coalition for Housing Rights and chairperson of Community Organization Development Institute’s Slum Upgrading Committee in Thailand. She was born in 1951 having her background study in Architecture from Chulalongkorn University and from the Housing and Urbanization Course from Copenhagen, Denmark. She received Japan Housing Association IYSH Award among others.

She has been extensively working on low-income housing development and slum upgrading in Thailand and in countries in Asia in past 50 years, on community led slum upgrading and housing development in the urban, rural, community welfare, disaster rehabilitation and resilient city development. In 1991, she was the project leader in the Sengki Land-sharing Project recieving UN Habitat’s “Habitat Scroll of Honour “. With CODI, she supported community upgrading in about 400 cities using flexible community finance mechanism. At regional level, ACHR supports projects on slum upgrading, community funds, community-driven disaster rehabilitation, regional training and advisory program and exchange visits. One key program the Asian Coalition for Community Action supported community-led upgrading and development in 215 Asian cities in 19 countries.