Seven partners have come together to implement the project by taking a lead on different intervention areas, with The/Nudge Foundation serving as the backbone organisation for Saamuhika Shakti. More partners are expected to join over the course of the initiative.
BBC Media Action’s intervention aims to bring changes in perceptions about waste picking and waste pickers. For waste pickers to experience greater acceptance from the society they live and work in, we believe that there is a need to change the way the general public thinks about the role of waste pickers in society. There is also a need to shift the way waste pickers think about their work, to see it as important, skilled work that contributes to society and the environment, that waste pickers are proud to be engaged in.
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CARE India’s intervention aims that waste pickers have secure and dignified alternative livelihood options through employability and entrepreneurial skills, promoting waste picker collectives, access to relevant resources, and creating an enabling ecosystem. CARE has been working in India for over 70 years focusing on alleviating poverty and social exclusion among the most marginalised women and girls. We are part of the CARE International Confederation working in over 100 countries for a world where all people live with dignity and security.
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Hasiru Dala, which means Green Force, is a social impact organisation that works with waste pickers and other informal waste workers to ensure a life with dignity. Hasiru Dala has worked in Bengaluru since 2011, and has spread to 11 cities across Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.
In the Saamuhika Shakti initiative, Hasiru Dala will work under four broad umbrellas to support and empower the community. The first is for improved linkages to government schemes (health, finance, housing) and advocacy to strengthen their security net. The second project is to address community and family violence in the communities, building systems of support for survivors and negotiating paths to mediation and bridge-building. Thirdly, the project addresses substance abuse in the communities, addressing rehabilitation and support systems for the waste pickers and their families. Lastly, the team is working towards re-design of workplace equipment, and development of a behaviour change program to ensure usage of this equipment, so as to provide safer working conditions.
Sambhav Foundation is the not for profit arm of LabourNet – a social enterprise focused on livelihood enablement. Registered as a trust, the Foundation’s key priorities are improving lives of men, women and youth from the socially disadvantaged and vulnerable background through skilling and upskilling initiatives.
As a part of Saamuhika Shakti initiative, the Foundation aims to provide better earning potential via alternate livelihood opportunities to waste pickers and their family members. This will be done through skill development initiative and employment support over a three-year engagement period.
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As part of Saamuhika Shakti, Save the Children India will focus on access to quality basic education for less privileged children (3-18) years from waste picker families and neighbouring communities. By providing support at the household and community level, infrastructure and capacity building at school and Anganwadi level.
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WaterAid India will focus on access to safe drinking water and improved sanitation for waste picker communities by building awareness, catering to immediate needs, creating evidence of exclusion and liaising with the government.
WaterAid is an international not-for-profit, determined to make clean water, decent toilets and good hygiene normal for everyone, everywhere within a generation. Only by tackling these three essentials, in ways that last, can people change their lives for good. Working in India since 1986, WaterAid has successfully implemented water, sanitation, and hygiene projects, extending benefits to some of the poorest and most vulnerable communities.
As part of Saamuhika Shakti, Social Alpha will enable mission driven innovators and entrepreneurs to create sustainable and scalable, social and environmental impact in the waste management industry – also leading to improvement of livelihoods for waste pickers.
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The/ Nudge Foundation, as a project partner of End Poverty, serves as the backbone organisation for Saamuhika Shakti and is responsible for guiding the overall strategy and vision of the collective impact initiative. End Poverty is a professionally managed, forward looking, catalyst organization that designs & delivers customized, innovative and self-sustaining development programs which are replicable and create social impact. The/Nudge Foundation works closely with the partners to facilitate collaboration and coordination of activities, build relationships, trust and buy-in from key ecosystem stakeholders and work towards mobilizing the right resources for collective success.
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The International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) is the external evaluation partner for Saamuhika Shakti. 3ie is a global leader in funding, producing, quality assuring and synthesizing rigorous evidence. They support studies and reviews that examine what works, for whom, why and at what cost in low- and middle-income countries (L&MICs). 3ie is also a global advocate for the generation and use of quality evidence in development decision-making.
For Saamuhika Shakti, the evaluation uses a mixed methods approach to assess if and how the initiative works to improve the lives of waste pickers and their families. It will assess how exposure to two or more partners and their interventions as opposed to no intervention or a single partner's interventions affects welfare outcomes (listed below) among waste pickers.
