Daan Utsav 2021: Changing Lives In Big Ways And Small
NGO startup stories on how organisations across India are bringing about significant transformation, and are looking to scale up.
NGO startup stories on how organisations across India are bringing about significant transformation, and are looking to scale up.
There is hardly a village today where you won’t find popular food or personal product brands jostling for space in tiny shops alongside some local brands as well as counterfeits. Today, rural FMCG is a Rs 3.5 lakh crore industry. From an environmental perspective, however, the result is catastrophic. This is somewhat like the Abhimanyu story in the Mahabharata. He only knew how to enter the Chakravyuha, not to get out of it. Products enter the village, but hardly any of the post-consumer waste comes out for recycling.
Neither the producers nor local gram panchayats have to date made significant attempts to create formal waste segregation, collection, and recycling initiatives. Hence over 90% of the rural inorganic waste which is easily over a million tons per year causes significant air, water, and soil pollution at the village level, writes Kedar Sohoni of Green Communities Foundation.
In this age of technology and advancement, parents are still struggling to find timely support and information to provide better care for their children with disabilities. I saw a mother travel more than 35 kilometeres to a school in an auto-rickshaw, sit outside the school for her daughter’s therapy, not knowing what was happening inside. While there has been significant advancement with therapeutic interventions, there is little traction to supporting the caregivers.
Disability affects not just a child but entire families, which face discrimination and stigma that stems from a lack of awareness in our society, writes Prachi Deo of Nayi Disha.
Adolescence and young adulthood are beautiful times, you make new friends, develop your worldview, engage and sometimes thrive in new spaces, make mistakes and learn from them. Like all of my peers, I was also in a relationship and exploring intimacy. While it may feel liberating to embrace these experiences, but without knowledge and support, it might be challenging in many ways.
My mother has been a cool parent in many spaces, but patriarchy is deeply ingrained in our conditioning, and it expects young women to not ever take charge of their bodies or sexuality.
My experiences with harassment, feeling of powerlessness and physical challenges made me deeply question all my life choices. Something changed in me, and it culminated in me leaving my full-time job and focussing on consulting on gender, and sexual and reproductive health and rights, writes Sanjina Gupta of Rangeen Khidki Foundation.
Through the current approach that schools take, children are unable to see the application of what they are studying nor are they able to navigate social structures to be successful. Unfortunately, with the current rate at which schools are improving it will take approximately a century for children in poor countries to catch up to today’s education levels in rich countries. We do not have a century and must rapidly transform or leapfrog schools.
The lack of focus on strong school leadership in India results in poorly managed schools and low quality of education for over 200 million underprivileged children, writes Jonathan Mendonca of Barefoot Edu Foundation.
The Sundarbans has porous borders and children are vulnerable. Most of them are first-generation learners with no learning help from parents. Children, unable to cope with their studies in higher classes because of the indifferent teaching in government schools, drop out of school and take to drugs or smuggling for easy money. Underage elopement, child trafficking, and child marriage are rampant in the islands.
I am a teacher by profession. I believe that the purpose of my life is to connect all children to a structured enjoyable early literacy program that builds a solid foundation for further learning and a fair chance for a good future. Particularly in rural areas where there is just no access to good quality education, writes Satarupa Majumder is Chief Functionary at Swapnopuron Welfare Society.
Stories inculcate values, learnings, and personal development in children of an impressionable age. However, not all children are fortunate enough to experience this basic joy of childhood. Through Tell A Story, iVolunteer is creating a digital library of stories in multiple languages and dialects that NGOs and schools working with children can access from anywhere. Tell A Story also creates a repository of folk stories from different communities and in different dialects which may be on the verge of getting lost, writes Shalabh Sahai.
During DaanUtsav, in collaboration with Internshala and other partners, with a response of over 1,000 volunteers, the campaign aims to spread awareness of the Safecity platform in its endeavor to make both private and public spaces safe for everyone. Red Dot Foundation will conduct an online orientation program, and the volunteers will reach out to at least five people in their community/neighborhood to share the Safecity platform and introduce the Safecity app and capture their experiences and stories of harassment or get them to fill their experiences anonymously.
One could also host an event for employees on the topic of safety and experiences captured. Safety tips can be documented after speaking to people or auditing their neighborhood. This data could be useful in initiating a change or making their neighborhood safer. The volunteers in turn share their own feedback of their experience of working on the campaign, writes Supreet K Singh of Red Dot Foundation.
Reap Benefit strives to be a platform that inspires youth to become action-based citizen champions called Solve Ninjas. Our mission is to activate solve ninjas in every community across India to tackle local civic and environmental problems using local data, local solutions, and local campaigns.
Play4good is a Pan-India whats app-based water-saving event for school children. As part of this, the child goes through an automated WhatsApp flow which has two levels of water-saving challenges, which they have to complete and submit their action to us through WhatsApp, writes Vimal Prabhu of Reap Benefit.