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The Axis Bank Foundation works towards creating sustainable livelihood opportunities in remote areas
For more than 10 years now, the Axis Bank Foundation has been working with a set of initiatives aimed at providing sustainable livelihood opportunities in some of the remote regions of the country.
"Our goal is to provide sustainable livelihood to a million people by the end of 2017. As of February, we've achieved 90 per cent of our target and would be surpassing it by the stipulated timeframe. This is one of the biggest achievements for the foundation," said Rajesh Dahiya, trustee, Axis Bank Foundation, and executive director (corporate centre) at Axis Bank.
The foundation was set up in 2006 and it works with 23 partners to execute the livelihood programme in 26 states. It had received contributions worth ~334 crore from Axis Bank and related organisations until the end of 2015-16. Dahiya said the livelihood programme emerged as an area of focus because it was seen as a means to the end in providing financial and economic inclusion for communities in rural pockets that have been left out of the nation's larger economic narrative. As a bank's foundation programme, this also tied in with the overall vision and mission goals of the group and provided the foundation with a strategic and focused thrust for the work it wanted to do.
However, as is the case with most such interventions, it is almost impossible to define the scope of work around a single objective. At the Foundation, this work has meant that the team has often had to engage with multiple projects that contribute to its larger livelihood goal of enhancing the economic capability of rural communities. It has thus initiated projects on improving access and quality of education and supporting the
Getting all stakeholders to view the problem of education through its lens has been the biggest battle that Pratham says it has had to fight. It was clear to the founders early enough that it was not enough to get the children to school. There were gaping holes in the education system that needed to be fixed. "Our motto has been 'every child in school and learning well'. However, we found that the emphasis on part of the governments was on the first part and not on learning," Chavan says. But now "as the government of India has modified the Right to Education rules to include measurement of learning outcomes," he sees it as a major victory.
Pratham was also among the first NGOs to focus on providing documented research on the state of the problem in education. It brings out a comprehensive state-of-thesector report called the Annual Status of Education Report or ASER that is victims of highway trauma in some of the rural areas that it works in.
The Foundation has chosen to work in regions where there has been a steady degradation of available natural resources which has, in turn, led to deficit of knowledge and skill among the communities. The Foundation said it looks for non-government organisations (NGOs) that demonstrate their prowess in using the grants to bring about multi-dimensional change.
The grant-led approach allows foundations to scale up the impact of their work; it has been the path set and followed by organisations globally. However, one of the big hurdles in such an approach, as opposed to direct intervention in the communities, is choosing the right partners.
Dahiya said it was a challenge to find a good number of NGO partners who can work to scale. Another challenge, he said, has been the creation of resilient social infrastructure to support the communities. "Capacitating beneficiaries to run these community-based organisations is another challenge we encounter." The need today is for cross-functional partnerships among NGOs with different functional expertise, as that would help better utilisation of resources and provide an impetus for new agencies to emerge in the same space. considered to be the authoritative guide to the changes, achievements and problems in the sector. The reports have helped put forward their views and solutions with greater conviction. It has shown that "the reality that more than 50 per cent children in Class V cannot read, or do simple arithmetic can be corrected in just a few weeks," says Chavan.
Getting the government to listen and mould its programmes accordingly has been a big achievement. "You could say that we are seen as major contributors to shifting to a focus on learning outcomes, not only in India but globally," he adds. Of course, a lot more has to be done and unless education becomes a priority for all states, there is always the risk that the country's famed demographic dividend could turn into a demographic disaster, he warns.