CSR
Like all people falling in the Bottom of Pyramid (BOP) category, drivers are unable to make optimum use of their resources, are prone to missed opportunities and incapacitated to live a life of happiness and prosperity due to their ignorance regardless of their education status.
They need a lot of handholding in order to progress in life. At 2 crores driver-families in India, this is a substantial number that impacts the average developmental stage of the country.
Corporates usually conceive programs around 1 or 2 issues affecting drivers and donate money towards their implementation. In other words, for want of domain knowledge, they are constrained to take a silo approach.
Keeping in mind the objectives of corporates and the needs of drivers’ community, we have adopted a holistic approach and conceived a plan that touches all issues, giving them the capacity and the ability to march ahead in life.
Helping a driver in one or more areas while leaving out the rest may not be very useful. Any gain from training provided to a driver, who is living a difficult life, is likely to be negated when he is confronted with difficulty in other areas. Therefore, we look at all the issues holistically. He is put through different programs addressing all these issues within a short span of time.
Concept notes on individual issues are available under 6 given sub-links but you may see the outline of concept note for holistic plan below.
Contact: Rakesh Agarwal, 8826887766
Holistic plan
In order to escape the misery of poverty and move toward a life of happiness and prosperity, a driver needs to be assisted in six ways – a trap that he himself cannot get out of through his own efforts. Those six areas are: (i) Health, (ii) Financial literacy, (iii) Digital literacy, (iv) Soft skills, (v) De-addiction, and (vi) Education/Career counselling.
These 6 interventions take care of his present needs and equip him with the tools to deal with future challenges. These tools also help him keep pace with the march of technology and provide a service to his passengers that he can be justifiably proud of.
- Health: Three of the most ignored and neglected ailments by a driver, especially auto driver, are back pain, eye problem, and dental issues; the first of these three being a reason out of the design of driver’s unergonomic seat in the autorickshaw.
- Financial Literacy: A driver suffers as much from poverty, exploitation and corruption as from the lack of optimum management of income, expenses, savings, investments, insurances and pension. In the absence of a sound financial profile, the drivers usually fall into the clutches of informal loan sharks from which they can never escape.
- Digital Literacy: Nearly half of the drivers or someone in their families are smartphone savvy, however, drivers themselves need to be digitally comfortable so that they can benefit from it in their professional and personal lives. This is also essential in order to maintain good financial profile which stands them in good state, especially while accessing loans from the formal sector.
- Soft Skills: This covers customer skills and other actions required as a matter of habit in their professional lives. Though it has no financial implications, the inability to live upto customer expectations is one reason why drivers suffer a poor image in the society. This is a function of lack of training.
- De-addiction: In order to make a living, an auto-taxi driver has to work seven days a week in his dead-end job which, to many of them, is only possible by falling prey to addictions such as khaini, other tobacco products, alcohol or drugs. Our de-addiction programs will help them by involving their family members.
- Education/Career counselling: Except in exceptional cases where they prepare their progeny to help the families pull out of poverty, drivers are neither equipped nor trained to guide their children in their education or career choices. This is a task that we have to perform directly through counselling where the drivers will play a supporting role.
For addressing these 6 issues, we will have to engage drivers at 4 levels: (i) Engagement with the families, (ii) Classroom training, (iii) Visiting providers for health services, and (iv) Sending drivers to rehabilitation centres.
Note:
We have partnered with Pardarshita, an NGO working on pro-poor governance, for conceiving and executing CSR projects that come our way from corporates and charity foundations. While we can effectively mobilise drivers and engage with them, Pardarshita specialises in efficient use of manpower, their recruitment, training the trainers, counselling, forming alliances and everything else that is required for the implementation of a CSR project. Mr. Rakesh Agarwal is an executive member of both NGOs.
