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CHILDREN

With over 40 per cent of India’s population below the age of 18, India is the “youngest” country in the world.

But India also has the highest number of child workers as well as the highest number of street children in the world. Almost half of the country’s child population is malnourished and some estimate the number of destitute children in the country to be as high as 100 million.

iPartner India recognises the need to support this issue, and through its donors supports several worthwhile projects, including the one below: 

CASE STUDY

Education to Protect from Human Trafficking in Kolkata

With a United Nations projected worth of about £20 billion, human trafficking is the fastest-growing criminal industry in the world. Modern-day slavery is rampant.

Children and young women in cities, who are left out from continuous mainstream education, are at the highest risk for becoming trafficking victims. Every single day, many small children and women in India are taken and sold for, sex work, entertainment and domestic help.

iPartner India works with an organization in Kolkata, West Bengal, which provides informal education to such small children as a means of transitioning them into formal education systems. This informal education runs out of local thanas (police stations) and also provides post school remedial support, access to daily nutrition, regular health care and a range of leisure and recreation options for children.

“The police station is more than home for me – I eat, play and learn here. I am looked after when I am sick and sleep here when I am tired,” says an eight year old helped by the project.

Together, iPartner India and this organization offer children and young women an effective and real chance at avoiding a life of slavery.

To view more case studies along this theme, click here. 

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EDUCATION

India has lower literacy rates than most countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Around 400 million Indians - almost 40 per cent of the population - cannot read and write and nearly 40 million children (aged 6 to 14 years) are out of school.
Girls are particularly disadvantaged as over half of Indian women are illiterate.
iPartner India believes higher levels of literacy is the key to a thriving society and by providing disadvantaged children with a decent education, we can provide them with a chance to break the perpetuating cycle of poverty in which they are trapped. 

Here is an example of one of the projects we support:   

CASE STUDY

Accelerating learning for illiterate eight to eighty year olds
Over one-third of Indians above the age of seven are illiterate. Behind the statistics are two realities – the adults (mostly rural, mostly female) who never learnt to read and never will, and children who drop out of school. Half of all Primary school children today drop out - most of them have not learnt to read. If they had, there’s a much better chance they would have stayed on!

Now there is hope and proof that they can become literate at any age. In just a few years, 60,000 women in the most backward areas of North India have learnt to read and write in 6 weeks. The inventor of the fastest and most effective literacy programme in South Asia realized that most of the people who need to get out of poverty are illiterate. Illiterate women in particular, get exploited by landlords, their husbands and other villagers.
Using a revolutionary literacy programme, master trainers are trained first, who in turn train the instructors who teach the students. Six to 10 students in each classroom watch animated cartoons, play card games, write letters and do tests for 100 minutes a day. A failure and drop out rate of just 1% proves how the poorest women who bear the bulk of the burden of daily chores value literacy enough to attend. iPartner is committed to helping this partner organisation – but they can go only as fast as funding permits.

It costs £785 to teach a batch of 24 rural women over six weeks. With your support, many more rural women could be writing their own futures.

To view more case studies along this theme, click here.

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HEALTH

 The majority of Indian people live in poverty and as such are at risk from many preventable yet debilitating diseases and fatal infections. Poor public health services exacerbate the situation.

Tuberculosis, malaria and pneumonia are rife and the population is now grappling with the emergence of new diseases like HIV and AIDS. Malnourishment and maternal mortality are the biggest health threats – one woman on average dies every seven minutes during childbirth – that’s 78,000 a year. And some 20 per cent of child deaths worldwide happen in India.

CASE STUDY

Making Rural Kapurtala District Cataract Free
In the rural Kapurtala District, people in most need of eye care live in far away villages and so are unlikely to visit the hospital for treatment. Thus many go on living their lives with eye problems that could be easily remedied with modern medicine.

For the last thirty years an eye hospital in this district, now supported by iPartner India, has responded by providing quality eye care to all segments of society irrespective of socioeconomic status. The hospital sets up eye camps in the remote villages where they are able to treat the less severe cases on the spot. For those patients needing more extensive surgery, free transport is arranged both to and from the hospital.

The hospital itself has 200 beds, a team of 6 ophthalmologists, 30 paramedical staff and numerous support staff. In the last two years, they have conducted a total of 43 eye camps and 1000 operations. Individual cards and detailed case sheets are prepared for each patient and excellent follow up care is provided.

The hospital is well on the path to achieving its vision of making the rural Kapurtala District cataract free in just three years.

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LIVELIHOODS

India is home to a third of the world’s poorest people. Around 85 per cent of the population lives on less than $2.50 a day. Although the Indian economy has grown over the last two decades, its growth has been uneven within different social groups.

The majority of the population is semi-literate and unskilled and relies heavily on the agricultural sector for its income. Income from farming is often too little to improve economic status and with little opportunity for saving or credit, poverty has taken a strong hold in the country.

CASE STUDY

Freeing women in Maharashtra from the clutches of sex work
Traditionally, Tamasha has been a Mahrwati folk art form involving song and dance. In modern times, it has become a living nightmare luring women from the poorest rural families who start their training at an early age and get trapped in a life of exploitation. 

While the theatre makes at least 1000 Rupees from each performance, a dancer receives just 10 Rupees - barely enough to buy a vada-pav (bun) from a roadside stand. None of these women marry but all have children from their patrons, turning to sex work to feed themselves and their children. Violence is rampant making up the majority of all reported crime cases – shocking, as very few offenses get reported at all. The women are not just poor and illiterate, but also oppressed and scared.

With support from iPartner India, a young organisation has reached 1,000 women in 45 villages, giving Tamasha performers a forum and a voice, without forcing them away from the theatre, their only current source of income. 
The women have been organised into Self Help Groups and taught about their rights. They also receive literacy classes as well as training in tailoring and embroidery. Their children can enter pre-school and the women have been introduced to savings schemes and micro-credit programs. 

Our partner organisation has empowered these women to fight for better wages, working conditions and access to health care. With basic skills, they have the means to earn without having to resort to sex work to survive.

With funding of £30,000 over three years, this organisation can reach another 1200

To view more case studies along this theme, click here. 

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CLIMATE CHANGE 

This burdens a socio-economic system which is already facing tremendous pressure due to India’s urbanisation, industrialisation and economic growth. India’s most abundant energy resource is coal, which although driving its economic growth is also making it more vulnerable to the impact of climate change.

Pressure is growing from the international community for India to find other energy sources including renewable and nuclear energy. At the same time pressure from climate change itself is being felt by those that live there. For example coastal fishing and agriculture are severely under threat from rising sea levels.

CASE STUDY

Sustainable Energy 

iPartner India has been supporting Barefoot College who have pioneered solar electrification in rural, remote, non-electrified villages in Rajasthan. The organisation believes that even the poorest of poor cannot be denied the right to use, manage and own technology to improve their own lives. By demystifying and decentralising sophisticated technology, they have handed its control to poor communities in rural India. Only villages that are inaccessible, remote and non-electrified are considered for solar electrification. 

At every stage, the Village Environment Energy Committee takes the lead. And every family who chooses eco-friendly lighting makes an affordable contribution towards it every month, irrespective of how poor they are. This allows even the poorest of the poor to feel a sense of ownership.

To view more sample case studies in this category, click here.

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If you're interested in supporting any of the causes above, or would like more information, please click here.