India Youth Fund – 2015 Grantees
Based in Kolkata, Prayasam is a unique child-led initiative that focuses on enhancing children’s roles as agents of change within their communities. They have been awarded the grant for their project titled ‘Area Health Minders’.
The project will work intensively with children from slum communities in Kolkata. The children will gain access to training programmes and workshops through which they will be equipped to lead health advocacy campaigns within their communities, and also articulate their shared experiences on international levels with the use of internet tools and pre-existing tie-ups with international web-based networks. The children will also be imparted life-skills education, and will be motivated towards designing and leading their own community interventions. If successful, the initiative will highlight the otherwise underplayed role of children in community-embedded activism.
Reap Benefit Foundation is a Bangalore based organisation which works extensively with children in using indigenous technological solutions for waste, water and sanitation issues that affect them. They have been awarded the grant for a project on empowering children as next-generation leaders on waste, water and sanitation concerns.
The project will be embedded in municipal schools in Bangalore, where the organisation’s team will engage in problem identification and solving strategies. These will involve intensive studies to identify issues and trends, and subsequently the development of tailormade and innovative combatant strategies and physical systems. The project is further underscored by its unique, hands-on approach that inspires ownership in children. Over the longer term, the project aims to have a positive impact on school attendances and students health. If successful, the project will be able to showcase how simple, co-developed technologies can spur larger transformative changes in communities.
Bangalore based Sukhibhava has developed low-cost and high-quality menstrual hygiene products, and uses the same to set up women-led entrepreneurships, thereby facilitating their empowerment. The project will focus on a planned community-embedded menstrual hygiene project
The project will entail the participation of a large number of slum dwelling women and girls who will be offered trainings and workshops on menstrual health and hygiene. A selection of women will be offered entrepreneurship training and will be facilitated towards leading a network of community-based entrepreneurs who will engage in menstrual health advocacy as well as the sale of Sukhibhava’s menstrual hygiene products. The process will be incentivised to maximise outreach and thus impact, and will ultimately hope to better standards of menstrual health and hygiene among women who live in informal settlements. Sukhibhava will be able to showcase a unique model of women-led and health-centred social entrepreneurship through this project.