WOMEN’S HEALTH AND LIVELIHOOD ALLIANCE (WOHLA)

Ensuring Health and Economic Well-being of Women

Returnable grants: Reimagining credit for a better normal

The pandemic and its harsh impact on informal workers and macro and nano enterprises inspired the creation of the Returnable Grant (RG).

RG is one where there is no legal obligation to repay; the expectation is only ‘moral’, i.e., the recipient is encouraged to repay when she has achieved some intended milestones of financial recovery.

RGs are designed to fill a specific gap in India’s credit ecosystem for small businesses: dealing with short term emergency situations or external shocks.

Our CEO, Priya Naik and Varad Pande (वरद पाण्डे) from Omidya Network India write about how Revive Alliance is deploying the Returnable Grant to aid recovery and resilience of informal workers and small businesses in the recent edition of Economic Times.

The RG enables funders to benefit 5-7x the number of individuals when compared to a simple grant. Once an RG is repaid, it circulates back into the system to support others with similar needs.

A comprehensive learning and evaluation plan built into the REVIVE platform will provide further data on suitability, behaviours, utilisation and so on.

The need to care about the care economy

Both unpaid and paid care work is essential for any society to survive and thrive and the indispensable nature of care work was further highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic last year. Apart from being necessary for the normal day to day life, the care economy is a huge employer, with serious growth potential.

Ria Kasliwal of the Observer Research Foundation has offered a fresh perspective on livelihoods generated through care work and its socio-economic impact.

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Join us in REVIVING India

The most vital factor to contain the destruction created by Covid-19 is to empower the ones dispossessed and at risk. To restore the livelihoods lost during the pandemic, we have partnered with USAID, MSDF and Omidyar Network India to launch a $6.85 million blended finance facility called REVIVE.

REVIVE will provide accessible and affordable capital in the form of grants, returnable grants and loans to previously employed or self-employed workers and at-risk nano and micro enterprises to either restart and sustain their work or find alternative business opportunities.

With REVIVE we are expecting to support 100,000 workers and enterprises with a preference given to youth and women.

I’m glad to inform you that REVIVE has already received support from corporates such as Arvind Limited, Godrej Consumer Products Limited and foundation like Brihati Foundation powered by Claris.

I would like to invite you to be a part of our goal to bring people back to a road to recovery and reignite the economy.

The revival of the informal sector is crucial to our economy

‘It is evident that there are strong linkages between the formal and informal, as well as between large and small segments of the economy. In order to comprehend the extent and scale of these linkages, it is important to take a closer look at the labour force participation data for the Indian manufacturing sector.’

LSE’s blog article serves as an important reminder that India must make the effort to secure its supply chains, especially in the manufacturing sector.

Making Skills and Livelihoods Training Count

Companies are spreading their efforts thin, focusing on the entire value chain rather than working in their areas of strength. A collaborative approach, where companies focus on what they do the best and strike partnerships to add value and plug gaps, is the way forward.

Samhita, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ambuja Cement Foundation (ACF) hosted the second edition of CSR Café Delhi on February 8, 2019, focused on Skills & Livelihoods.

Social sector leaders from 21 companies, and foundations discussed challenges in retaining trainees, sustainability of entrepreneurship-related initiatives, the gaps in current models, aspiration mismatch, quality of training, overlap of efforts by organisations, migration-related issues and so on.

The participants included ONGC Foundation, Philips Healthcare, Apollo Tyres, Walmart, Amway, DCM Shriram, Aricent Technologies, PNB Housing Finance, DLF Foundation, Adventz and National Foundation for India.

Participants agreed that there was an inherent weakness in the current model – companies are focusing on the entire value chain rather than just on their areas of strength. A collaborative approach where companies focus on what they do best and strike partnerships to add value and plug gaps was the way forward.

Key challenges faced by companies:

  1. Monitoring and retention of trainees after training even when the employers are already on board. Hence, impact measurement becomes an issue.
  2. In rural areas, sustainability of entrepreneurship programmes is difficult because of the presence of multiple companies providing support to the same set of beneficiaries through multiple interventions. The government also runs many subsidy schemes which disincentivise people to continue with entrepreneurship.
  3. There is a mismatch between the aspirations of youth and the wages provided by industries. Seldom do skilled workers enjoy a premium over unskilled ones which leads to dissatisfaction.
  4. Counselling of trainees is another big gap which needs to be addressed for scalability
  5. Being a complex ecosystem, there are too many externalities and stakeholders with differing needs. All companies focus on setting up centres and training irrespective of their core strengths, which could be just one step of the value chain such as counselling, pre assessments, mobilization etc.
  6. Self-sustainability of enterprises beyond pilot programmes is another issue as the entrepreneurs start depending on CSR support to create opportunities. It becomes challenging for companies to exit programmes.
  7. Data is available only from the organised sector and is quantitative in nature, with little focus on qualitative information such as the training process, quality of trainers, assessment of trainees, post placement support etc.

Some best practices/solutions to be explored:

  1. Companies, foundations and NGO and SE partners should focus on retention of trainees rather only number of people trained.
  2. A thorough needs assessment and mapping of aspirations should be done before starting a programme, and counselling should be built into the programmes.
  3. Trainees could be enrolled in mentorship programmes where the mentors support them during and post training to address any issues faced by the trainee.
  4. Productivity needs to discussed with the employers to support hikes in wages of skilled workers.
  5. The concept of migration centres could be explored to ease the transition of youth from rural to urban areas.
  6. Programmes for behavioral change/soft skills/vocational training should be incorporated at an early age at school level.
  7. Collaborations should be based on expertise and strengths, instead of the entire value chain.
  8. Different companies working in the same geography could explore shared services.

Next steps:

Going ahead, Samhita, UNDP and ACF will facilitate the following:

  • Map which corporates are working on which part of the value chain in the skill development space and what they do best. This will create a repository of experts across the value chain for strategic collaborations.
  • Engage in discussions and information sharing for collaborations for shared services. This could be done through technology platforms, using services of professional organisations who facilitate interventions and work as aggregators.