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Tag: Collaboration

How India Inc can craft an effective response to the pandemic

Corporate India plays a critical and urgent role in mitigating the economic, and health impacts of the pandemic. Industry leaders, public health experts, experienced members of social enterprises and thought leaders such as Nobel laureate Esther Duflo came together for Samhita’s ‘Leaders with a Purpose’ webinar series, to address the need for collaborative partnerships across stakeholders. Read on to find out more about the invaluable role corporate India can play in the arena of promoting behaviour change, providing innovative and technological solutions to secure their own supply chains, microentrepreneurs, hospitals, and rural and distant communities.

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Development through community participation

As part of its CSR services, Samhita Social Ventures undertakes community needs assessment for companies to align the expectations and intentions of the company with priorities identified by the community that it seeks to benefit as a key stakeholder. This is accomplished by conducting door-to-door surveys, interviews with key informants in the village (such as sarpanch, asha worker, aanganwadi workers) and focused group discussions with the residents.

Through our intense and in-depth interaction with communities across the country, we have realized that community participation and acceptance are critical in ensuring the success of CSR programs. While the theoretical discourse on development has always acknowledged the importance of participatory approach (you may have heard of Robert Chambers and Paulo Freier), this takes on a pragmatic connotation for companies beginning to think about CSR in India.

Our work has shown that the aim should be to address social implications of corporate activities by securing community participation in decision-making and consideration of local knowledge and the environment. The community should drive and own these initiatives. Any tendency to superimpose or force CSR or other development initiatives top-down on communities could be disastrous.

So for example, during one such assessment in two clusters of Vadodara District, Gujarat it was observed that 87% people defecate openly every day. While reducing open defecation is a national and international priority, it was most interesting to note that communities in one cluster did not perceive it to be an issue. The assessment found that these communities defecated in the open not only because of the unavailability of toilets but due to low awareness of the potential health hazards, internalized behavior, accustomed practice, perception of high costs of maintaining and constructing toilets, caste based differences in terms of maintenance and cleaning, etc. It was seen that these communities appeared resistant to using toilets because of all these reasons. In this context, CSR initiatives of companies to set-up toilets for such communities to eliminate open defecation, disregarding the voices of the community, would be futile and bound to fail. The company would have, in effect, spent its funds putting up concrete structures with its branding

Pharmacists

There are approximately 8,00,000 pharmacies in India with a compounded  annual growth rate of 10.08% in the organized sector. As per a study conducted on pharmacies by Samhita Social Ventures and the Cipla Foundation  41% pharmacists provide medical guidance to customers and 57% viewed themselves as a

Not All Superheroes Wear a Cape

Sole bread-winner Valarmathi Thangaswami, a 55-year-old sanitation worker from Trichy, works to support her struggling son despite all the hurdles that line her path

To the world, Valarmathi Thangaswami is a 55-year-old sanitation worker who lives in a shanty  in Trichy. But at home, she dons the identity of a super-mother. After her husband

India Protectors Alliance – Catalytic achievements with the support of HUL, BMGF and RBL Bank

Over the past two years, we have experienced a unique and unprecedented situation due to the COVID -19 outbreak and subsequent lockdowns. The multiplicity nature of COVID-19 needed an all-hands-on approach that saw corporates, philanthropists, civil societies, and individuals come together to support immediate relief efforts and save lives.

Corporate India and non-profit organisations’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic has shown the sector at its best to create a better normal, such as The India Protectors’ Alliance (IPA). The IPA was founded in early 2020 with the support of Hindustan Unilever, RBL Bank and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to protect the most vulnerable and at-risk communities. Through this INR 92 Crores Alliance and the collaboration of 59 funders and 52 implementation partners, we have impacted over 5.3 million beneficiaries across underserved communities, vulnerable populations, and frontline Covid warriors such as healthcare and sanitation workers.

IPA’s Approach: what we did & how we did it

IPA was constituted to equip workers in the healthcare and sanitation sectors to pursue their livelihoods safely by protecting them from COVID-19.

Initially, IPA helped fulfil immediate and critical needs like PPE kits and masks for the frontline health and sanitation workers. However, as the body of knowledge about COVID-19 and its management evolved, IPA too evolved to incorporate other interventions, especially during the second wave of the pandemic. We began working on training and capacity building programmes, providing

Key principles followed:

Our Achievements

Total Beneficiaries : 5.3 Million

A) Healthcare Interventions

Strengthening the COVID-19 vaccination drive: We have inoculated over 3.02 million citizens in high-risk and remote areas across 99 districts in 19+ states through our COVID-19 vaccination drives.

Enabling access to critical care equipment & protective gear: Protective gears were supplied to frontline healthcare workers and police officers. Key medical equipment such as ECG machines and maternal monitors were also supplied for regular patients. 30 implementation partners helped supply this equipment across the country, thus helping us reach over 0.35 million people.

Addressing the medical oxygen crisis: In partnership with nine implementation partners, IPA procured and distributed 950 oxygen concentrators and set up four 500 LPM oxygen plants across the country. This helped impact over 0.3 million hospital patients across the country.

Training on COVID and non-COVID skills & knowledge: Through capacity building of healthcare workers and community awareness programs, we impacted nearly 0.13 million lives.



B) Sanitation Interventions

Strengthening community sanitation : Safe sanitation interventions were initiated across Maharashtra to build and improve access to sanitation infrastructures in schools and urban slum communities. Interventions were also planned for women working in informal workplaces. We impacted over 1.42 million lives.

Empowering sanitation workers: With focused sanitation safety, short-term relief and skilling, and entrepreneurial livelihood programs, the IPA has built the long-term resilience of more than 0.082 million sanitation workers.

Key Learnings & Takeaways

1. Collaboration across 59 funders and 52 implementation and knowledge partners quickly proved the potential of a collective impact that can be envisioned for any prospective project.

2. These learnings further underlined the need of building medium to long term infrastructural and training solutions to strengthen the health systems of India.

3. The importance of agility within organisations to take swift strategic decisions and act on them, especially during a crisis, plays a crucial role in effective and timely relief management.

4. Partnerships with the Government are critical and could unlock significant scale-up opportunities.

IPA

Mahindra Logistics joins the India Workers

Samhita Social Ventures welcomes Mahindra Logistics Ltd. as a pillar of the India Workers Alliance to provide immediate relief to its driver community by transferring Rs 3,000 to their bank accounts to enable them to buy essential commodities.

Born out of the Samhita Model, the India Workers Alliance propogates a collective CSR fund for economic support and recovery of India