Saamuhika Shakti - In Solidarity with Waste Pickers

Saamuhika Shakti - In Solidarity with Waste Pickers Saamuhika Shakti is working to improve the quality of life of informal waste pickers and their families in Bengaluru.

The initiative is supported by the H&M Foundation.

Isn't this the cutest dress!A highlight from partner Sambhav Foundation's self-employed tailoring training in August: Wo...
15/09/2023

Isn't this the cutest dress!

A highlight from partner Sambhav Foundation's self-employed tailoring training in August: Women learned to make these pretty frocks!

The Sambhav team’s skilling work with waste pickers and their family members goes beyond tailoring training. One of their popular courses is the Data Entry Operator course, which has over the past few months helped youth from the community get jobs at large companies and earn up to Rs 12,000 a month.

Did you know there are hair waste pickers in Bengaluru?They go street to street collecting saved hair that has fallen wh...
23/06/2023

Did you know there are hair waste pickers in Bengaluru?

They go street to street collecting saved hair that has fallen while combing or from a hair cut!

It is primarily done via a barter system. 100 gm of hair is exchanged for goods worth Rs 400.

Girgitlu (toys), broom made from palm fronds, or aluminium vessels are the favoured items for exchange.

The collected hair is then sorted by length/shade, and sold up the market to wig makers. Wigs and wig making is a huge market and hair is actually one of the most valuable waste item.

And this is how the expensive wigs we buy start their journey. It all begins in the streets, with the waste pickers.

24/05/2023

In an increasingly digital world, knowing all the uses of a phone is an essential life skill — from accessing and managing bank accounts, updating ID card details, joining community WhatsApp groups, knowing how to use the camera and making digital payments. Awareness is also important to protect oneself from online scams.

Partners CARE India, Hasiru Dala and Sambhav Foundation work with waste-pickers and their families to equip them with these digital skills, and by doing so, open up their worlds to all that the Internet has to offer - from the essentials such as banking and payments to building a job profile, surfing YouTube, or simply, creating a social media profile.

Our March newsletter is out! We bring to you our stories & learnings - an unseen world of hair pickers, a sisterhood of ...
31/03/2023

Our March newsletter is out!

We bring to you our stories & learnings - an unseen world of hair pickers, a sisterhood of success, what we mean by , how partners frame gender work & how children in waste-picking communities learn.

Be sure to check it out - https://bit.ly/42W0T1m

From being at the mercy of usurious lenders charging exorbitant interest rates, to now setting up interest rates for the...
28/03/2023

From being at the mercy of usurious lenders charging exorbitant interest rates, to now setting up interest rates for themselves! Here is the inspiring journey of women waste pickers of Banashankari.

85 women who are part of an Area Level Federation (ALF) in Banashankari came together to discuss internal lending and interest rates to start businesses. ALFs are started by bringing together multiple self-help groups in a geographic locality.

The members of Shivam Federation, formed with the help of partner India discussed reducing interest rates from 2% to 1% for business loans within the members and 1.5% for welfare/personal loans. Contrast this with interest rates as high as 20% from private lenders earlier!

Why is this significant for us?

Many of the women who were part of these discussions only began learning about finances, saving, lending and collectivising for the first time over the past two years.

Their journeys show a tremendous arc of learning and agency — from coming together as a collective and opening bank accounts to getting registered with the National Urban Livelihood Mission, starting their own businesses to improve earnings and now, discussing lending rates that work for them!

PC: CARE India

There are clear benefits to women from waste-picking communities having easy access to clean toilets and safe drinking w...
16/03/2023

There are clear benefits to women from waste-picking communities having easy access to clean toilets and safe drinking water, which helps ease the load of their daily chores and ensures better physical health. But what can help them have better agency over their lives, bodies, and daily routines?

In the final part of our gender work series, we showcase how partner India goes beyond just ensuring access to toilets and water:

🔹Menstrual health: The team holds regular sessions for women and girls to reinforce and improve hygiene practices. For the women, this is a space to shed inhibitions and discuss their health issues openly. For younger girls, these sessions help prepare them for the changes their bodies go through, the types of menstrual hygiene products they can use, and how to safely dispose of them.

🔹 Operation and maintenance committees: WaterAid helps the residents of waste-picker localities form these committees to take ownership of operating and maintaining shared toilets while also learning how to resolve issues among themselves. Women are a part of these committees, actively bringing up their problems and ensuring decisions suit all women. Their participation also helps promote leadership qualities.

🔹 Hygiene: In most cases, women are engaged in water collection and child care, so sessions on hygiene awareness and ways to store water are directed at them to help keep their families healthy.

In the photo: An operations and management committee meeting in progress. Credit :WaterAid India

15/03/2023

Only 26.5% of social media users in India are women, according to a report by We Are Social.

In Part 7 of our gender work series, we spotlight how partner BBC Media Action India optimised media strategies so that women social media users have a fair chance to engage with their campaign, which aims to shift how the general public of Bengaluru looks at informal waste pickers and their work.

They did this by:
🔹Engaging women influencers: 7 out of 11 influencers who have been part of social media intervention were women.

🔹Monitoring social media ads performance and optimising it to reach more women.

And the result?
🔹So far, women constitute 37% of audiences reached by the campaign. The team has also observed a higher engagement on video content among women audiences.

🔹And, impact monitoring research after the campaign showed better recall among women, especially for the music video.

This month, we highlight the work our partners do on the ground with women, girls and their families. Watch this space.



In the video are snapshots of the different campaigns that engaged women social media influencers; video credit: BBC Media Action India

In Part 6 of our gender work series, we showcase partner Hasiru Dala work to address issues of domestic and gender-base...
14/03/2023

In Part 6 of our gender work series, we showcase partner Hasiru Dala work to address issues of domestic and gender-based violence, as well as substance abuse and child marriage.

Hasiru Dala works with women, girls, men and boys to break down gender-based stereotypes and stigmas and runs interventions to support women, children and community members against gender-based violence, domestic violence in the home and violence within the community.

A team of peer counsellors, health and social services coordinators work across the city to raise awareness against the normalisation of domestic violence, substance abuse, child marriage and child labour, and offer paths for therapeutic support, rehabilitation and schooling, along with judgement-free spaces where their agency is respected.

Other interventions provide support for community members and children against substance abuse and addiction, with help from NIMHANS and other institutions.

With the Centre For Mental Health Law And Policy (CMHLP), the team also empowers a cadre of community peer counsellors who are able to reach out to their neighbours and community members and offer mental health support.

This month, we highlight the work our partners do on the ground with women, girls and their families. Watch this space.

In Part 5 of our gender work series, we spotlight how partner Sambhav Foundation's skilling program for women from waste...
13/03/2023

In Part 5 of our gender work series, we spotlight how partner Sambhav Foundation's skilling program for women from waste-picking communities covers the entire cycle — from training and upskilling to mentoring and market access for their new businesses.

Sambhav Foundation’s entrepreneurship development course helps women learn business planning, financial management, marketing and sales.

The team supports the women entrepreneurs with six months of handholding, helps them network with women from previous training batches, provides a starter kit so they can set up their businesses (tailoring or beautician therapy), connects them with funding and formalisation of business through the National Urban Livelihood Mission, and helps them with market linkages for orders.

This month, we highlight the work our partners do on the ground with women, girls and their families. Watch this space.

In Part 4 of our gender work series, we showcase how partner Social Alpha , as part of Saamuhika Shakti, has actively wo...
10/03/2023

In Part 4 of our gender work series, we showcase how partner Social Alpha , as part of Saamuhika Shakti, has actively worked with founders of start-ups to build capacity and practices to promote gender, inclusion and diversity across their value chain.

Most of these start-ups are in the early stages of their operations and while this adds an additional layer of challenges in integrating a balanced gender-responsive approach, it is also an important time in an organisation’s journey to start thinking about diversity, equity and inclusion.

Among the steps taken by Social Alpha to encourage start-ups to take adequate measures to solve some of these challenges is co-identifying non-financial milestones — such as the hiring and formalisation of women waste pickers in the companies as one of the indicators of demonstrating progress— an unconventional practice for investors in the industry.

This month, we highlight the work our partners do on the ground with women, girls and their families. Watch this space.

Photo: Vinod Sebastian / Saamuhika Shakti

Equity, equality and women’s rights are all about men too. In Part 3 of our gender work series, we spotlight partner CAR...
09/03/2023

Equity, equality and women’s rights are all about men too.

In Part 3 of our gender work series, we spotlight partner CARE India, which provides life skills and entrepreneurship training for waste pickers and also helps them form self-help groups to learn to save their income, open bank accounts and begin small businesses.

While more women than men take part in these training sessions, engaging the male family members is an integral part of CARE India’s work.

🔹 The training modules are designed to be gender-sensitive;

🔹 Men are also mobilised to attend soft skill training sessions;

🔹 And, men who have been supportive of their wives, sisters and mothers attending these training sessions are felicitated as male champions to encourage other men to support women.

CARE India has also developed a gender dialogue toolkit, through which the team holds regular conversations with both men and women to initiate discussions on gender.

This month, we highlight the work our partners do on the ground with women, girls and their families. Watch this space.

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Bangalore

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