WOMEN’S HEALTH AND LIVELIHOOD ALLIANCE (WOHLA)

Ensuring Health and Economic Well-being of Women
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Tag: Skilling

Samhita–CGF partners with AMHSSC to aid 50,000 women to create thriving livelihood pathways

The REVIVE Alliance was set up with the mission of creating economic opportunities for vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the Alliance’s mission, REVIVE Women@Work is to collectively drive economic recovery and resilience for low-income working women (small women-entrepreneurs and workers) through financial and digital inclusion, access to social security, skilling, and market linkages. Through these interventions, we aim to create sustainable and impactful livelihood opportunities for women to enter, sustain, and grow at their workplaces.

As part of this mission, we are happy to announce that Samhita – Collective Good Foundation (Samhita – CGF) has partnered with Apparel Made-Ups and Home Furnishings Sector Skill Council (AMHSSC) to complement the Government of India’s skilling mandate and augment the journey of 50,000 women to grow beyond gainful employment and create thriving livelihood pathways.

“Economically empowered women can be powerful catalysts for change. They tend to invest more of their income into the well-being of their families, have greater control over their reproductive health, and can significantly drive economic growth. Samhita’s partnership with AMHSSC aims to serve as a model to increase meaningful participation of women in the workforce and enhance their journey through skill building, adoption of positive health practices, and eventually become an agent of change in her community”

Priya Naik, Founder & CEO, Samhita Social Ventures.

Through this partnership, Samhita – CGF will enable livelihood linkages of 50,000 women to manufacturing units of large corporate houses, and support AMHSSC in offering customised and relevant services across 4 key areas critical to thrive in the workforce:

  • Worker health & well-being education and services
  • Awareness and Protection from Violence and harassment in the workplace
  • Economic Empowerment and Professional development
  • Encouraging Entrepreneurship

 “In today’s world, one not only needs to be skilled in a Particular sector but must also be aware of his/her rights, especially for women to know their gender related rights. AMHSSC along with CGF is committed to provide such insights to the concerned stake holders, and support their journey into meaningful employment opportunities”

Dr Roopak Vasishtha, CEO, AMHSSC

Through Revive Women@Work, we envisage a better normal where more women are gainfully employed and acquire the necessary skills to take control of their own lives.

Sanitation Workers

There are more than five million full-time sanitation workers of which two million are directly engaged in high-risk tasks such as emptying septic tanks, maintaining sewer lines, and drains at the cost of their health, dignity, and safety. Irrespective of their contributions, they are not recognized as essential public service providers, instead are overlooked, made invisible, stigmatized, and ostracized by society at large. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of sanitation workers and their families to many challenges. They face various challenges at the workplace, such as compromised health and safety, limited or no awareness about social security schemes, and limited skills and livelihood options. 

Therefore, the REVIVE Alliance aims to uplift sanitation workers by improving their overall quality of life while addressing critical socio-economic challenges faced by sanitation workers through focused interventions that cater to their immediate, medium- and long-term needs. In doing so, the project not only impacted the workers but also their family members resulting in 4x overall impact.

The project has 3 components: 

  1. Provision of PPE kits to sanitation workers, 
  2. Providing upskilling and entrepreneurship support
  3. Linking sanitation workers with relevant social security schemes. 

The program is implemented by Kam Foundation and Haqdarshak Empowerment Solutions Private Limited in Pune and Mumbai, Maharashtra. So far, PPE kits have been distributed to 1000 sanitation workers and have undergone covid-19 prevention training. 499 sanitation workers have received benefits from the social security schemes, and 792 sanitation workers have undergone upskilling and entrepreneurship training. The project envisages improving the health of sanitation workers by preventing them to catch the infection, increasing usage of PPE kits, access to government entitlements, and enhanced skills and technical know-how for increased income generation potential.

Blue-Collared Workers

Given the steep hit that the garment industry took due to COVID-19 and the impact it had on the livelihood of garment workers, Arvind Foundation has partnered with Samhita-CGF and impact partner Learnet to provide financial support, re-skilling and placements to ex-Arvind workers who were laid off during the pandemic. Arvind Foundation is the CSR arm of Arvind Ltd, a global player in the textile and apparel manufacturing industry and they became an integral member of the REVIVE alliance – aiming to create a better normal.

Program Structure 

Training:

  • Basic job readiness training

Placement:

  • Identification & mapping of jobs according to the skills and location preference of the selected candidate
  • Collection of placement proofs from employers and KYC documents from candidates 

Returnable Grant:

  • After preliminary KYC and placement verification conducted by Learnet and CGF, the list of candidates and their documents are shared with Supermoney for verification and onboarding
  • After candidates accept terms of the returnable grant through calls conducted by Supermoney, the batch is finalized by CGF 
  • The equivalent amount is transferred from CGF to Supermoney after a round of internal approvals
  • Upon receipt of the transferred amount, the grant worth INR 4,500 is disbursed to the candidates before they receive their first salary
  • After the deferment period of one month, Supermoney sends out repayment reminders and links to the candidates
  • The candidate repays the grant in five instalments of INR 900 each
  • Repayments are collected, reconciled and transferred back to CGF account by Supermoney

What did we learn?

Mobilization:

Learnet is a training and placement agency and they have limited connections with the local communities. There is a need for the intervention of a grassroots NGO or organization that can aid mobilization and ensure that the program serves the beneficiaries in need (people who lost jobs on account of the pandemic in this case). 

Learnet, CGF and SuperMoney struggled to reach out to these communities and conduct monitoring/impact assessment after their placements and receipt of RG. The involvement of an intermediary organisation can improve accountability when it comes to repayment and will further streamline the RG related processes. 

Curriculum Design:

Candidates are associated with Learnet for a short span of 4.5 hours and are mapped to a job almost immediately and have very limited connection with them. The curriculum is very basic and does not equip them with the required skill sets. Since the cohort was heterogeneous in terms of their socio-economic background, qualifications and technical skills, Learnet struggled to map the available openings to their skill sets and could not fully satisfy their requirements. There is a need to design a longer upskilling/reskilling program with a focused approach that aims to train candidates to take up job roles that are in demand (Refer reskilling note proposed to Arvind). 

It is also imperative to incorporate financial and digital literacy modules into the curriculum to ensure uptake of digital tools amongst communities. 

Capacity Building:

Training partners are new to hybrid programs including financial instruments like Returnable Grants. There is a need for capacity building of these training partners to improve communication and ensure a seamless flow of clean data. 

Returnable Grant:

These salaried blue-collar workers earn an average salary of INR 10,000 – 12,000 and have the capacity to repay. Based on informed consent and prior assessment of their financial health, e-mandates can be executed for the candidates willing to accept the terms & conditions. Alternatively, suitable channels can be created for candidates who wish to make offline payments (via cash/cheque) and the repayment options should be designed in such a way that it leaves no one behind. Additional support to open bank accounts, correction of KYC particulars and encouraging the community to adopt healthier financial practices and be undertaken by implementing agencies.

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.

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.
Disclaimer: This blog is made possible by the generous support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) under the terms of cooperative agreement no. 7200AA21CA00027 (2021-2026). The contents are the responsibility of Chemonics International and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
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