Innovating with the poor
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Innovating with the poor
Best Practices Foundation has grown multifold in recent years. Along with continuing to implement our flagship livelihood programme, MOVE (Market Oriented Value Enhancement), BPF together with an alliance is pioneering a sustainable, autonomous model of community based organisations.
In 2017, AJWS supported dialogues with women’s federations across the country on strengthening their collectives to tackle issues faced by women and girls. As a result of these dialogues a new intervention emerged in 2018, to build women’s and girls’ agency. With the twin goals of Institutional Strengthening of women’s collectives and empowerment of adolescent girls, BPF as part of a larger alliance of CBOs and CSOs, is currently working with 13 federations across the states of Bihar, Assam, Telangana and Karnataka.
BPF is currently working towards building an intervention to work intensively with Community-Based Organisations (CBOs) to build autonomous and sustainable institutions. Our work in institutional strengthening aims to build CBOs of economically vulnerable women and gender/sexual minorities, to enable them to become self-sustaining institutions. These institutions will be able to respond to livelihood challenges of women from marginalised communities, Dalit populations, single women, gender and sexual minority groups and sex workers. Strategies that include livelihood enhancement, building networks and leadership strengthening is also used to empower these institutions. We also aim to build government and other partners for the CBOs. Currently, BPF is working with xx CBOs across India.
Arise Trans(forming) Lives is a project that aims to enhance the livelihood options and overall wellbeing of the LGBTIAQ+ community in Bangalore and nearby districts. A foundation course focussing on personality and skill development is offered covering topics such as communication, leadership, mental wellbeing, financial literacy and digital literacy. The project also works towards upskilling by supporting candidates in completing their education and taking up vocational and technical skill development course.
The project engages closely with companies and small businesses to place LGBTQAI+ candidates in workplaces. Sensitisations are also conducted in companies. To help build supporting ecosystems, psycho-social counselling services are offered to project constituents.
The project aims to build a livelihood model that can be adapted across cities and states in India.
BPF is partnering with METSCON to start a Centre of Excellence (CoE) to scale up our work on livelihoods and institutional strengthening of poor marginalised populations.
Micro-entrepreneurs require different kinds of support to establish and grow their business. There is no systematic platform that supports poor and marginalised micro-entrepreneurs in India. The Center of Excellence is working towards setting up institutionalised support for such entrepreneurs, and also support for enterprises, civil society organisations, NGOs, trainers supporting and building community-based organisations. The CoE will provide a technological platform that can respond to the needs of businesses including credit, technical training, information on markets, licensing and so on.
CBOs also do not have a platform that enables them to be autonomous and self-sustaining. The CoE will create a knowledge management base that houses institutional strengthening modules on compliance, proposal writing crowd funding, leadership, etc. It will create an outreach mechanism for CBOs and partners to network and implement programmes.
Best Practices Foundation (BPF) was invited to create a compendium of best practices and innovations in the fields of ground water and sanitation for Arghyam and five of its partners in the states of Bihar, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Odisha and Tamil Nadu. The themes that were highlighted included engagement with government, innovations on toilet technologies based on social, cultural, geographic, and environmental contexts. Behaviour change through innovative use of the information, education and communication component of SBM helped to mobilize communities and generate demand for toilets. This compendium will be published in the next six months.
BPF is implementing its award winning entrepreneurship model, MOVE (Market Oriented Value Enhancement) to address the livelihood issues faced by female sex workers by enabling them to access credit, set up and run businesses. Implemented in Bangalore with 30 women from Bommanahalli we aim to create a robust system for entrepreneurship and self-employment among these women.
A multi-stakeholder partnership, consisting of BPF, Bhumika, Nirantar, federations formed by MS, and MS State Societies in Karnataka and Assam and Solidarity Foundation have come together to help Community Based Organisations (CBOs) become self-sustaining and autonomous in four states.
It aims to build capacities of CBOs to address issues faced by women in terms of accessing their entitlements and engendering governance.
