India has millions of migrants from neighboring countries. They move for employment prospects and often end up doing the most menial jobs like scavenging and living in shanties in small communities. One Billion Literates Foundation, India while doing humanitarian relief work during the Covid-19 lockdown in April 2020 discovered a community of waste pickers living in extreme poverty in the suburbs of Bangalore, the Silicon Valley of India. The adults in the community either go into the urban areas to collect waste or work as domestic help in the neighborhood. The children do not go to any school and are engaged in sorting and segregating on the land where they live. The OBLF team has been working with them across Education, Sanitation, Health for the past 2+ years.

In Sep 2020, the foundation started an early education program for the close to 40 children in the age group of 3-8, as a learning intervention was most needed for the community to break the cycle of poverty.  There were innumerable hurdles, but the team: Vinita Kurup, Mahesh Shetty, Swathi Chinnasamy, Elizabeth Elenjical, Faiza Khan, Ankita Kar under the leadership of CEO (Hon.) Anish Ramachandran has been working tirelessly at risk to themselves during the Pandemic to uplift the community and to instill a love of learning in the children.

Integrating 40 first generation learners into the nearby Public Elementary School in 2021 was a major milestone. The community has recently lost their homes, meagre possessions, and livelihoods. The foundation seeks your support to help rehabilitate this group.

WHAT PROBLEM ARE WE TRYING TO SOLVE?

This community of waste pickers has now dispersed to different parts of Bangalore. It is an imperative that they be enabled to live together which is when they thrive. OBLF is trying to trace the families and start the recovery process for them. The process involves rebuilding trust with the community, getting the children back to school, building housing, access to sanitation, etc. This means helping them regain a respectable livelihood, one that is hard but one they take pride in doing well.

HOW WILL THE FUNDS RAISE SOLVE THE PROBLEM?

The funds from this project will help us adopt a multi-disciplinary approach, that will ensure the children can go back to school, the families can rebuild their tent-houses, toilets can be built for them to ensure they don't go back to open defecation, and they get predictable access to primary health care facilities. This is something that the foundation has been doing for the past 2 years and must rebuild this process with them, yet again.

POTENTIAL LONG-TERM IMPACT

We as global citizens can simply not afford to ignore such humanitarian crises wherever it happens. At the end of the day, they are all human beings who were born into severely under privileged circumstances.

We hope we can count on you to make this community regain a modicum of dignity and live better lives. A contribution of $50 can help buy school supplies and uniforms for a child and $200 can help build a temporary accommodation for a family of 4.

PayPal contributions can be sent to OBLF USA at oblfusa@onebillionliterates.org

”And the truth, you know, love is all we need”

Questions can be sent to Anish Ramachandran CEO (Hon.) OBLF anishr@onebillionliterates.org or Anamika Majumder Founder, OBLF anamikam@onebillionliterates.org.

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