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| Aajeevika Bureau |
All of us know the importance of having an identity in today’s world. Such information defines who we are and helps us in all kinds of activities, whether booking tickets, opening bank accounts, getting a telephone connection or even making bulk purchases. However, in India, a large section of the population, especially rural labourers, exists without a proper identity and faces tremendous difficulties when migrating from villages to cities in search of jobs and livelihood. Aajeevika Bureau saw this as an issue that needed to be addressed immediately and set to work to provide solutions, services and security to seasonal migrants who work in cities, factories and farms.
Ever since it was set up in 2004, Aajeevika Bureau has played an active role in providing IDs to around 50,000 migrants from villages in Gujarat. Not only this, Aajeevika also organises training programmes and counselling sessions to better equip the migrants when they look for jobs. “One major sector we concentrate on is construction. Apart from that, we also train them to become electricians, plumbers, factory workers, etc.,” says Rajiv Khandelwal, one of the founders of Aajeevika Bureau.
The migrants are trained by people who are already working in these fields in the cities. Aajeevika also plays an effective role in providing placement to these people. Around 2,500 people have been placed by them with the help of small tie-ups in several places. Aajeevika has also played a major role in fighting corruption by providing legal counselling and aid to migrants. It has already helped in 400 such legal cases, with settlements totalling Rs 25 lakh.
Aajeevika did face some challenges in establishing itself in the initial two years. “When we started, migration was not an easy issue to work on because people thought that it was not a necessary topic. We were always aware of the facts and knew that we should not neglect reality. It was more of a conceptual challenge,” says Rajiv. Funding was another challenge. “For organisations like ours, with new ideas, funding is not very easy because they say it’s not a tested model. It takes a few years to be done,” explains Rajiv.
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| Aajeevika Bureau’s orientation program |
Initially, they did receive some amount of funding from Ashoka Fellows, a group of social entrepreneurs, which recognises innovative solutions to social problems. Most of Aajeevika’s funding comes from the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust and ICICI. It was able to gather Rs 1.6 crore in the beginning, which took care of the initial expenses. As Aajeevika is a non-profit organisation, Rajiv says it gets difficult to maintain the flow of activity, so they do not have any plans for expansion.
On November 13, 2010, the Aajeevika Bureau received the Social Entrepreneur Award for the year. The award was given away by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurships in partnership with the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation in the presence of Kapil Sibal, minister for human resource development. Rajiv says winning this award has helped in bringing about visibility to the problem at hand, rather than the organisation, and that was the need of the hour.
Regarding future plans, Rajiv says Aajeevika hopes to spread its wings through partnerships. It is not really keen on establishing more bureaus in other states, but hopes that it can implement its work through partnerships with other organisations.
Rajiv says that with what Aajeevika is doing, it can only hope to help migrants on a small scale. “It is only through policy changes at the state or national level that we can hope to address the issue on a large scale,” he says.
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