Social innovations for inclusion, equity

AIILSG’s International Center of EQUI-T consistently strives to enable effective social transformation through innovations. It seeks to design appropriate interventions to address issues of the weaker sections of the population, both rural and urban, with a view to mitigate their vulnerability and build resilience

The International Center of EQUI-T has been established at AIILSG with the vision of ‘Life of Dignity & Equity for the Deprived’. The Center strives to address the issues of poverty, equality & inclusion sustainably. Research, actions, capacity building, policy advocacy, knowledge management & providing customized need-based support to the stakeholders are the main pillars of its work. The unique feature of this center is that it works in all domains of poverty alleviation-Urban, Rural, Tribal and Nomadic Tribes. The Center has to its credit researches, capacity building & IEC knowledge products conducted for Government of India supported National Resource Center for ‘Support for National Policies for Urban Poverty Reduction’.

A key emphasis of this Center is on Social Innovations. This is a fundamental tenet of AIILSG’s International Center of EQUI-T which consistently strives to enable effective social transformation through innovations. The Center starts its response with the resources on hand by mobilizing movements through its network of volunteers. In line with the nation’s priorities for inclusiveness, AIILSG through its International Centre of EQUI-T has sought to design appropriate interventions to address issues of the weaker sections of the population, both rural and urban, with a view to mitigate their vulnerability and build resilience.

Various institutions and organisations, both International and Indian, have partnered IC EQUI-T in its efforts. The National Stock Exchange for example, under its CSR programme, is supporting the organization with two projects related to improving quality of education of 1600 under-privileged children from urban, rural, tribal and nomadic tribes background. In sync with AIILSG International Center of EQUI-T’s movement ‘Right to Education with Right Education’, the two projects are spread over four locations in Maharashtra. They focus on strengthening the demand side as well as the supply side of ‘Right to Education’ to improve access to education of the right quality for the under-privileged children.

The key innovations nurtured through both these projects are ‘Shikshan Ranjan Kendra’ or Children’s Resource Center, activity based learning through use of therapies, efforts of ‘Shikshan Mitras’, customized inputs and methodology and exposure visits among others.

Another crucial aspect of its work is mobilizing community participation i.e. participation of the primary stakeholders-the vulnerable populations of women, men, children & elderly from slums, remote tribal & rural areas and nomadic tribes. This mobilization is done in very creative ways such as street plays, puppet shows, chitra-katha (story telling) & awareness generation rally.

In another example of its commitments in the rural sphere, International Center of EQUI-T is working with the United Nations Populations Fund (UNFPA) on a very prestigious project-‘Improving Health & Reproductive Health of Women and Girls from the Denotified and Nomadic Tribes (DNTs)’. This Project addresses the hitherto neglected aspects in an attempt to understand the health and reproductive health needs of women from the De-notified tribes. In a rigid patriarchal society, the status of Denotified and Nomadic Tribal (DNT) women is highly precarious. The inhuman atrocities faced by these women and lack of access to basic services severely impact their health and reproductive health. Moreover there are hardly any studies focused on health status of DNT populations especially DNT women and girls in particular. This initiative with DNTs is spread over more than 181 settlements in three districts of Maharashtra covering more than 24,000 persons.

The Award Winning Project-‘Community Self-Assessment and Planning with Women’s Participation for Disaster Risk Reduction of Vulnerable Communities’ has received wide global and community acclaim. The ‘RISK’ Award, instituted by the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR), Global Risk Forum, Davos and the Munich Re Foundation, Germany was bestowed upon IC EQUI-T whose project was ranked first in the world among 145 projects from 62 countries.

This project is a global innovation as it addresses 3 hitherto neglected aspects vis-à-vis disaster risk reduction:

• Disaster Risk Identification and Assessment by the Community thereby empowering the vulnerable urban slum communities to assess their own disaster preparedness & plan for disaster risk reduction.
• Preparedness for effective response with special emphasis on participation of women & children who are among the most vulnerable to disaster impacts.
• Knowledge Management and Education with special focus on developing child-friendly visual tools/medium. The pioneering grassroots implementation project will reach at least 25,000 slum dwellers from 10 slums in Pune city.

The global innovations being fostered through this Risk Award 2015 Project are:

• Gender sensitive self-assessment & planning by the vulnerable slum communities to assess their own disaster preparedness and plan for disaster risk reduction
• Developing participatory & child friendly visual self-assessment and planning tools for the same,
• Gender sensitive disaster risk reduction planning by centre-staging the participation of slum dweller women who are worst affected by disasters,
• Innovative IEC through creative communication mediums e.g. street plays, puppet shows, etc,
• Developing innovative scientific and systematic tools like ‘Slum Disaster Risk Reduction Plan’
• Establishing grassroot participatory mechanisms e.g. Slum Level Disaster Risk Reduction Committee, developing a cadre of community volunteers-cum-Master Trainers for enabling the sustainability of the initiative.

An important realisation through the journey of this project was high degree of lack of awareness, ownership and participation of the youth in Disaster Risk Reduction who should be on the forefront of these initiatives. This forms the genesis of the Movement: “Movement of Youth for Disaster Risk Reduction” (abridged as- ‘MY DRR’) launched recently by AIILSG’s International Center of EQUI-T.

‘Men for Women’s Health’ (MWH) is another movement launched by the IC EQUI-T which enables men to be more responsible towards women’s health. It supports addressing issues of gender inequality, violence against women, women’s safety & security and their health & reproductive health issues. The movement adopts a holistic approach in appreciation of interconnectivity of women’s health issues with economic participation, self-reliance, decision making in wider societal context and empowerment. This movement has reached more than 10,000 stakeholders till now.

Keeping in mind the priority of “Gender Equality & Women’s Empowerment’’ an entity ‘International Center for Women-in-Deprivation’ has been created at the IC EQUI-T of AIILSG.

The Center focuses on the issues of inequality of “women-in-deprivation” from the urban, rural, tribal and nomadic tribes contexts. The current priorities and key focus areas of this center are-

• Addressing Health and Reproductive Health Issues of Women-in-Deprivation due to lack of access to – health services, education, economic resources and assets, appropriate technologies, etc.
• Mainstreaming & center staging role of women-in-deprivation in disaster risk reduction planning, environmental upgradation planning, climate change resilience & adaptation planning.
• Promoting financial literacy & financial management skills among Urban, Rural & Tribal ‘Women-in-Deprivation’
• Promoting ‘Appropriate Technologies for Women-in-Deprivation’, Addressing Gender Gap in Technology, Developing and fostering a cadre of Women Technopreneurs.
• ‘Grassroots Gender Inequality Report’: Bringing to fore issues of gender inequality, exclusion, lack of health, education & economic opportunities, violence against women, etc.
• Promoting role of women-in-deprivation as ‘Enablers’ at community level for Environmental Education, Financial Literacy, Health & Nutrition, Livelihoods & Skills Development, Education of Children, etc.