How we do it
The objective of the project has been to provide alternate means of livelihood to increase real income of candidates including women, migrant, aged and families of waste pickers, without disrupting the existing ecosystem and sustainably ensuring higher income, better social acceptance, lower financial risk and better working conditions.
In order to ensure access equitable opportunities for all, beauty, self-employed tailoring, data entry operators are the vocational courses on offer for women and youngsters from the waste picker communities in and around Bengaluru.
The primary impact includes training programs for waste pickers and their families with job oriented programs, workshops and Entrepreneur Development Program with hand holding the waste pickers through the initial on ramp. These programs have impacted more than 4,200 waste pickers directly and more than 15,000 of their family members.
As part of the collective impact, we actively explored ways to build a stable and decent livelihood for the waste picker community. With this in mind, three important interventions were planned.
Entrepreneurship Development Program – Apart from the employability course and handholding for entrepreneurship skill development, soft skills training was imparted to the candidates to ensure presentable, well-groomed candidates who can ace interviews, with their communication skills and resume.
Financial Literacy– awareness sessions on using mobile phone productively, knowledge to download apps, net Banking procedures, e- mail ID creation, linking phone numbers to their bank accounts and regular check on their transactions, helped them save their earnings and to lead stable financial lives.
Social Security - Support for opening bank accounts was enabled with Dvara Bank as a partner. For bank accounts to be created, social security details like, ID cards, address proofs among others had to be facilitated. Sambhav team supported waste pickers to apply and receive social security documents.
Pandemic Response
While livelihood building via skilling has been our primary focus, the outbreak of the pandemic led to expanding our efforts into the more urgent need of the hour, at that point, for the waste picker community. Sambhav Foundation identified ways to ensure an income for the waste picker community along with others, and ensured the community was supported via -
1) Alternative Livelihood Programs
- Due to loss of livelihood because of lockdown, grocery kits were distributed in areas struggling to meet daily needs.
- Also, alternative income earning opportunities were imparted through virtual classes like - face masks making orders, were fulfilled via the waste picker communities to ensure they earned a livelihood during lockdown.
- Sanitisation and Hygiene Entrepreneurship (SHE) program was introduced to community women via virtual workshops, to sanitise buildings and vehicles from the virus, on order placement. They were even enabled with the required sanitisation equipment along with Personal Protective Equipment kits for their own safety.
2) Access to Hospital-Care
During Covid-19, the waste picker community, amongst other vulnerable communities, were supported by Sambhav’s 24/7 Help Desks at government hospitals in Bangalore for guidance
3) Preventive Healthcare
The COVID 19 vaccination drive was one of our big interventions. In the thick of a pandemic, the waste picker community was among the most exposed to medical waste due to irresponsible disposal of hospital and covid waste, leaving them in danger of contracting the virus. Sambhav conducted mega vaccination drives, free of cost to the recipients, in multiple locations to ensure access to quality healthcare for vulnerable communities such as the waste pickers.
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