Alternative Realities - Restoring Dignity of Homeless Youth - Changing the face of Cities
Esta presentción ha sido seleccionada como finalista del desafío
Young Men at Risk: Transforming the Power of a Generation .
Address the needs of the homeless Youth through a comprehensive, Multi sector approach, including coalition building, awareness-raising, journey towards self-development and creative advocacy campaign
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tu idea
Year the initative began (yyyy)
2003
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Parcela tu innovación en el mosaico de soluciones
Which of these barriers is the primary focus of your work?
Young men’s missing voices and input leads to disconnection and failed policies
Which of the principles is the primary focus of your work?
Unleash creativity that channels experiences of risk and vulnerability toward leadership
If you believe some other barrier or principle should be included in the mosaic, please describe it and how it would affect the positioning of your initiative in the mosaic:
This field has not been completed
Name Your Project
Alternative Realities - Restoring Dignity of Homeless Youth - Changing the face of Cities
Describe Your Idea
Address the needs of the homeless Youth through a comprehensive, Multi sector approach, including coalition building, awareness-raising, journey towards self-development and creative advocacy campaign
Innovación
Describe your program or new idea in one sentence.
Address the needs of the homeless Youth through a comprehensive, Multi sector approach, including coalition building, awareness-raising, journey towards self-development and creative advocacy campaign
What makes your initiative uniquely positioned to create change in your community?
During my initial days, when I used to visit places where homeless citizens live, one homeless friend shared “Who would like to live a life of unknown and wretchedness? Simply because we cannot pay the rent of houses in Mumbai and we have no other option, every dream seems out of way for us. We just want to feel like any other human beings, like you, but alas our compulsion has pushed us in this state and we are compelled to be like this because of our homeless tag.”
It touched something inside me and was a turning point of my life. I realized my purpose and rest followed. I alwasy believe in them.
A key to my approach is building coalitions among diverse sectors – NGOs, municipal authorities, law enforcement, hospitals, churches, and academic institutions – to address the issue. Forming geographic and functional Cultural Groups of homeless youths, who feel and present their issues to people at large is central to my work.
Describe how you organize and carry out your work?
I am working at three levels. One is to create a cohesive and active groups of homeless citizens at locations where they live, two, create awareness among the public about the magnitude of the homeless issue and three, try & get the state organizations to formulate policies in favor of the homeless.
Using diverse methodologies such as street theater, documentaries, print & electronic media, studies, survey and research, I try to bridge the wide gap between mainstream society and invisible homeless citizens.
What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond?
Since its founding in 2003, my organization has reached out to more than 50,000 homeless citizens. I have ambitious plans for future, including an education and vocational-training initiatives for homeless Youth and construction of a transti sheter which will house up to 50,000 homeless citizens over the next five years. The model of my organization will cover 10 major cities of India in the next five years, reaching out to more than estimated 300,000 homeless youth. Next year owards Cultural groups of homeless youth will be enacting street plays across the country to rasie awareness and build unity among homeless citizens.
My Night-Out activity that encourages larger population to meet homeless citizens and stimulate social interactions will help increasing number of citizens from mainstream society to positively get connected with homeless issue. Village-Journey (Rural-Yatra) activity will connect internatioal and national city population with Indian multi-cultural villages and youth migration related issues, which will give visiblity to the issues of homeless youth and create a support base.
What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea?
It is disheartening to see hard working homeless youth sleep on dusty pavement under the dark sky in night, dulled by air pollution with the surroundings of deafening noises of the vehicles and harsh street lights. There is an urgent need for shelter with sanitation facilities, where these citizens can have their share of peaceful sleep after daytime exhausting labor. I am negotiating with state as well as private institutions for opening up their infrastructure and help homeless youth get a dignified life. School buildings are unutilized during night time and it can be used effectively.
There is an urgent requirement for communication devices, like mobile sets and computers that will help homeless youth get connected with the market and will also increase their income capacity. The activity is called Labour-Hub.
There is a need to repeal old state policy on homeless, which labels then as criminals and formulate new policy including shelter and livelihood policy to capitalize on creativity and potentials of homeless youth.
Impacto
Describe your impact in one sentence, commenting on both the individual and community levels.
Invisible homeless issue has got wide spread visibility and state acknowledgement. Also unorganized homeless youth has got organized in groups and created creative platforms.
What impact has your work achieved to date?
Constant exchanges with the homeless people, in the form of meetings, street plays, night-outs, workshops, etc., facilitated the formation of a geographical homeless groups at locations where they sleep.
Identity cards from my organization have been issued to homeless youths, which has helped them to maintain individual identity and get a dignified visible existence.
Constant interactions and sensitization worshop with police authorities has helped in bringing down the police atrocities among homeless youth in Mumbai.
More than 300 street plays have been enacted by homeless youth across the city and has created active support groups. The cultural group of homeless youth also provides consultancy to other organizations and earn revenue out of it.
A vibrant and active network of various organizations and volunteers are consistently take part in activities with homeless youth groups.
There is an active support of print and electronic media for the issue of homeless.
Hard work and creativity of Homeless youth have been acknowledged at various state level forums.
Number of individuals served
My work is mostly through my initiative "Alternative Realities", which is directly and indirectly reaching out to 100,000 homeless citizens. Directly through our activities like Night-out, Rural-Yatra, Educational initiatives and so on we are reaching out to 50,000 homeless citizens.
5 geographical groups of homeless youth have been formed at 5 locations, each groups has 20-25 youth members. These are cultural groups and have been active in writing, directing and enacting street plays across the city. We provide support of blankets and medicines to more than 25,000 homeless citizens in the period of one year.
We reached out to more than 10,000 homeless youth, who were labelled as anti-social elements and police put them in jail becase they were sleeping on footpath. We have sensitized more than 100,000 city population on the issue of homeless in the last one year. Also created a city level alliance of 20-25 organizations to support homeless youth. I have identified and trained more than 50 homeless youth leaders till date.
Community impact
My efforts have brought about positive behavioural changes among homeless Youth. Initiallly there were feeling of worthlessness and sense of despair among homeless youth community. My activities and interventions have helped them get united. With the help of various self-development activities and life-skill education, I started tapping on their positive energy and creativity. As a result homeless youth have catapulted into stonger personalities, full of hopes and ideas to move ahead and accept challenges in life. Homeless youth have got trained in doing creative advocacy on their issues and have been building support groups through it. There are individual identity and a feeling of Indian citizenship among homeless youth. As a result of vocational training homeless youth are aiming towards better career options and also creating options. Wide spread interaction between mainstream society and homeless citizens have made homeless youthmore confident. Homeless citizens have started accessing health care facilities and a dignified existence. The fear of mainstream society has turned into feeling of friendship.
Society at large
Homeless youth work at all low end jobs and form an integral part of city economy, but always been treated as social outcaste by mainstream society. My efforts have been instrumental in giving visiblity to the hard work and creativity of homeless youth, which has resulted is bridging the gap between mainstream society and homeless youth. As a result the vulnerability of homeless youth has got addressed to a large extent and help eveybody realize the feeling of togetherness and social interdependence.
What measure do you use to gauge your impact and why?
I use several measures including number of geographical and funcitonal groups of homeless youth. It shows the feasibility of tapping positive energy and facilitating unity among most diverse & mirginalized section. Another measurement is widespread participation of mainstream society in my activities, which is impartant to bridge the gap between two and help homeless youth feel dignified. Percentage increase in teh social and economic capacity of homeless youth is next measure, which shows progresive positive impact of my initiative in their lives.
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Sustenibilidad
How is your initiative currently being financed and how would you finance further expansion and/or replication?
Whenever I require any monetary support, I along with volunteers make power point presentations, documentaryshows for Rotary Club, Lions Club and so on. So far I have been successful in mobilizing modest financial support of some of my activities. My activities are majorly supported by monetary contributions of individual members of my organization, who are from across the country.
Subsequent to several media articles, many corporate executives have become the member of my organization and started supporting the issue. Several organizations, institutions, and other NGOs have been providing infrastructure and volunteer support.
My new initiatives like Village-Journey, Labour-Hub, remodelled Night-out and so on are self sustainable. These activities require only initial seed money. Homeless youth members are also putting in theri contribution to support many activities.
Provide information on your current finances and organization:
I have been able to raise INR 500,000 till date. Largest funders are individual members of my organization. I have also got modest monetary support from Rotary Club of Mumbai. Main source of revenue is consultancy given by cultural homeless youth groups to other organizations and institutions. Also we provide trainings on personality-development and street-theater to other insitutions, which fetch us second largest revenue for the organization. I also organize talks and lectures on urban poverty issues, which is the third largest source of revenue for us.
The activities of organization is implemented with the help of 25 full-time comitted homeless youth members, who are the fellows of my organization. There are more than 35 volunteers who keep supporting the activities of my organization.
Who are your potential partners and allies?
Support group of NGOs, academicians, the general public, corporations, government officials, media persons and the like has been created to advocate on behalf of homeless citizens. Common Interest Groups of college and school students are constantly providing volunteers for activities like street plays, organizing meetings, resource mobilization and so on. Eelctronic and print media has been alwasy a great support. I am also the member of various naitonal and international movements. Now the efforts are on to build an international support group.
Who are your potential investors?
The larget investors are citizens from mainstream society. Once they see and realize the mutual interdependence between homeless citizens and city economy, they turn out to be the largest supporter. I have been successful in a limited way with this investor group but efforts are on to make it more successful. Second largest investors are homeless citizens themselves and this is their way of claining ownership. Third largest investors are clubs, banks, institutions, funding agencies who support youth development & entreprenurial activities.
La historia
What is the origin of this innovation? Tell us your story.
After graduation I declined to abide by my parent's choice for my carrer and left home. Economizing on the modust income I could gather, I started sleeping in open near religious places in Delhi and also continued with my education. After 4 years of rigorous struggle I got admission in a very prestigious Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. In Mumbai I used to venture out in night to understand the city. There I witnessed hundreds of homeless population wandering in search of livelihood, in various places of Mumbai. Youth eking out in difficulty, without proper food for days with lost hopes and shattered dreams…homeless being victims of police atrocities, women taking refuge of sex work to meet their mere basic needs, old citizens languishing in the streets in search of security, children succumbing to juvenile delinquency.....this sight of extreme misery and predicament dawned on me as I saw this as the Reality of “Independent” India.
Yes! I was taken aback…. but continued to harbor optimistic vision and firmly believed that this reality could be changed and vulnerbale homeless Youth, who resided at the lowest rung of marginalization, could be empowered to change their lives so that they would enjoy dignified life and would be able to eschew the callous attitude of society. This was possible only if they could unite, could realize their potential, exert and exercise their creativity and believed in own selves. Hence the phrase “United we stand, divided we fall” became a guiding principle for me.
Please provide a personal bio. Note this may be used in Changemakers marketing material.
I am born and brought up in a small village. The disadvantaged village ambience instilled in me great personal ambitions. I graduated from St. Xavier’s College where I studied Economics. On my life-journey Indelible images of poor in urban areas, searching for means of survival on the street made me realize their vulnerability. After graduation, I joined development sector. Parents were not supportive and I supported myself on own. I joined Tata Institute of Social Sciences and subsequently initiated work with homeless.
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Comentarios
Hi Abhishek,
I'm intrigued by the Night-Out activity because it addresses both class issues and poverty at the same time. It gives an oppurtunity for people to demonstrate solidarity with people who they would otherwise not meet or socialize with. It is deeply humanizing, giving faces to a problem that is often viewed in numbers. Concerning the plays; do the members of the homeless communinty write and create them on topics they deal with? Are there other artistic endevours that the community could pursue?
Robert
Many thanks for your encouraging comment. You are absolutely right, Night-out activity is very effective in bridging the gap and addressing the issue of homelessness. There are groups of Homeless youth and yes the members of homeless community wrtie abd create street plays on topics/issues they deal with. It is again a very effective way to sensitize others on the issue and give homelessness a visibilty. We have created a musical band of homeless youth, who write and sing songs as well that is called EHSAS (Feelings). Another this on which we are working is Labour-Hub, which will increase the bargain power of homeless youth and enhance their income capacity. Bsides we are also involved in creating homeless humanity chain, candle walk, moonlight meetings and so on. Great number of people participate in all these activities and these activites have been of great support in advocating for the cause. Recenlty I ahve collaborated with BBC UK and volunteers are coming forward to experience homelessness for 24 hours, which is helpful is breaking the negative taboo such as homeless are lazy. I would love to give you details about my acitivities, should you need any. Wishes.
Abhishek Bharadwaj
Founder President - Alternative Realities
"I would walk with all those who walk. I would not stand still to watch the procession passing by"
Many thanks for your encouraging comment. You are absolutely right, Night-out activity is very effective in bridging the gap and addressing the issue of homelessness. There are groups of Homeless youth and yes the members of homeless community wrtie abd create street plays on topics/issues they deal with. It is again a very effective way to sensitize others on the issue and give homelessness a visibilty. We have created a musical band of homeless youth, who write and sing songs as well that is called EHSAS (Feelings). Another this on which we are working is Labour-Hub, which will increase the bargain power of homeless youth and enhance their income capacity. Bsides we are also involved in creating homeless humanity chain, candle walk, moonlight meetings and so on. Great number of people participate in all these activities and these activites have been of great support in advocating for the cause. Recenlty I ahve collaborated with BBC UK and volunteers are coming forward to experience homelessness for 24 hours, which is helpful is breaking the negative taboo such as homeless are lazy. I would love to give you details about my acitivities, should you need any. Wishes always..
Abhishek Bharadwaj
Founder President
Alternative Realities
"I would walk with all those who walk. I would not stand still to watch the procession passing by"
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Webpages:
http://www.srtt.org/changelooms_intro.html
http://www.humanscape.org/Humanscape/2005/Oct/visible .php
http://www.ashoka.org/changelooms
http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20050822&fname=PNamrata&sid...
http://epaperarchive.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?
Ref=VE9JTS8yMDA1LzA0LzE0I0FyMDAzMDI=&Mode=HTML&Locale=english-skin-custom
http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1849389,000600010004.htm
http://www.indianngos.com/award/ashoka1.htm
http://in.news.yahoo.com/061113/211/69c60.html
http://www.civilsocietyonline.com/news_details.asp?news_id =207
http://bharadwajabhi.blogspot.com/
www.tiss.edu/Alumni_in_Press020.pdf
http://www.youthactionnet.org /member_projects.cfm?proj_id=750
Hello Abhishek! It is great to see your entry in the competition. You are doing some very impressive work! Could you tell me a bit more about the way in which you are working to get state organizations to formulate policies in favor of the homeless? Also, is there any part of Alternative Realities that work on job training?
Keep up the great work!
Dana
Really encouraging to read to comment. Thanks a lot. I am working very cosely withthe state governmnet. In my Night-out activity I requwest them to come and interact with homeless individuals as well as experience homelessness. I have been active in writing case studies of homeless individuals that proves the room for improvemnet in the present state policies on laws regarding homelessness. I have also been active in formulating a draft policy on 'Beggary Prevention Act', which criminalize homeless individuals living without any identity. Organizing meetings with state policy makers and helping them realize the creative potential of homeless Youth has been very effective. I have also given municipality a plan for Alternative Shelter,which is self sustaining and revenue model for the state.
Alternative Realities does provide jod training. Alternative Realities is helping homeless in personality development and personal documentation. It is a creative way to help homeless youth make their Bio-data and also learn effective ways to present themselves during job-interview. Also Alternative Realities try and facilitate connectinge homeless Youth with market on equal and non-exploitative terms. Through our programs like Street-play, Night-out, Active-pariticipation and so on we encourage homeless Youth to take the role of leaderhip and initiate their own small-scale business. Then we follow up with other details as well. Hope this brief outline will help in answering your comment. Once again thanks. Feel free to ask more.
Warm Wishes,
Abhishek Bharadwaj
Founder President - Alternative Realities
"I would walk with all those who walk. I would not stand still to watch the procession passing by"
Hello Abhishek,
You mention that "there is an urgent requirement for communication devices, like mobile sets and computers that will help homeless youth get connected with the market and also increase their income capacity." Have you considered trying to forge some kind of technology partnership with someone who might be able to donate those items? Also, you mention the Labour-Hub a few times. Could you explain what the Labour-Hub is? Is it a computer lab?
Lastly, it looks like you currently have some good sources of funding. What are you planning for long term financial sustainability? Have you thought of getting corporate sponsorship?
Thank you for your response.
Dana Frasz
Changemakers
bharadwajabhi reponse to the changemakers question
Q: What is your plan to scale and expand your innovation into your community and beyond?
>Since its founding in 2003, my organization has reached out to more than 50,000 homeless
>citizens. I have ambitious plans for future, including an education and vocational-training
>initiatives for homeless Youth and construction of a transti sheter which will house up
>to 50,000 homeless citizens over the next five years.
Between 2003 and 2007, have you built any transit shelters for the homeless ?
If not, what were the hurdles preventing you from doing it ?
rgerads
jacky foo
++++
Children's Village and Vocational Centre (CVVC), Kenya
http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/3940
bharadwajabhi response to Changemakers
Q: What other resources, institutional, or policy needs would be necessary to help sustain and scale up your idea?
>It is disheartening to see hard working homeless youth sleep on dusty pavement under
>the dark sky in night, dulled by air pollution with the surroundings of deafening
>noises of the vehicles and harsh street lights.
I lived in Tiruchirapalli (State of Madras, India) and New Delhi between 1966-1973 when I was a student and during the summer months, the best place to sleep was on top of the roof. Yes, even at that time I did see workers sleep on beds that are placed out for the night and outside the shops they work. One of the reasons was also for security of the shops. In Beijing (90s), many restaurant workers sleep in the dinning halls (with rolled out mattresses) after working hours.
In Kampala and Nairobi, minimum-wage workers often need to spend half their salary for a small room; so they often team up with others to split the rent. A cheap room is difficult to find as land and "proper" housing are often not available or being controlled by the "wrong" people.
>There is an urgent need for shelter.........
>School buildings are unutilized during night time and
>it can be used effectively.
I am hesitant with this approach of using school buildings (during the night time).
>There is an urgent requirement for communication devices, .....
>....that will help homeless youth get connected with the market
>and will also increase their income capacity.
How does this help ..... Please elaborate.
Project "Children's Village and Vocational Centre" (CVVC), Kenya (http://www.changemakers.net/en-us/node/3940) face similar problems but fortunately I am dealing with after care services of youths after their probation and for vulnerable youths who have been cared for by NGOs and other institutions.
It is true that there are many more other less fortunate youths who are at risk and do not have a proper place to stay.
regards
jacky foo
What can I say? The work you are doing is BEYOND inspiring. Here, in Washington, DC, we have our share of homelessness, more specifically boys and young men who are homeless.
We, at Life Pieces To Masterpieces, Inc. (Go to www.lifepieces.org for more info.) enjoy a very productrive partnerniship with Covenant House Washington, a nanational non-profit that provides support to homeless youth in our area. So many of our apprentices ( participants) have endured homelessness and this is definitely an area in which we look to program partners to assist us.
Your application truly moved me and I thank you.
In Peace
Mary Brown
Life Pieces To Masterpieces, Inc.
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