Aim
The aim of the Samata Saathi is to enbale young people and local communities to collaboratively create active civic justice solutions, grassroots leadership, and while promoting active citizenship and constitutional values, in order to facilitate their access to essential government entitlements such as education, social welfare, and financial inclusion schemes. The Samata Saathi’s aims to increase accountability, improve representation, and build a resilient democratic society by building a feedback loop between society and government. This aim is to foster inclusive and equitable communities where individuals are empowered to shape their own futures and access the resources and opportunities.
Introduction
Samata Saathi, an initiative of the Samata Center, is dedicated to safeguarding the rights and well-being of young people and marginalized communities. With a focus on fostering access to justice, information, services, and effective implementation of social benefit schemes, the organization empowers individuals to become active citizens who contribute to the strengthening of democracy.
Central to the approach is the training of young people and community leaders as Samata Saathi’S. Through paralegal training, communication and media advocacy, and the use of technology, the organization delivers essential services to local communities, empowering them to take charge of their challenges and work collaboratively towards solutions.
Samata Center’s core approach involves training young people and community leaders as Samata Saathi’s who are Rights Associates. These Rights Associates receive paralegal training and develop skills in public policy implementation, serving as valuable community resources. Passionate and well-informed, these grassroots leaders work alongside activist, youth-led organizations, ensuring their meaningful engagement in driving positive change.
Samata Saathi actively strive to provide access to information and effective implementation of social benefit schemes for students. Through collaboration with social leaders and thorough research, the program identifies and addresses key challenges faced by vulnerable students in India. Ultimately, the Samata Saathi aims to enable 10,000 vulnerable students and individuals in local communities, enabling them to access legislated education scholarships and social security schemes that will contribute to a more secure life.
Additionally, Samata Center serve as physical hubs where citizens can access information and receive support for various schemes. These center’s are strategically located in remote and low income areas with limited information accessibility, functioning as capacity building and support center’s for neighbouring villages and districts. The organization's activities encompass research, advocacy, and skill development programs, all aimed at empowering communities and driving positive change at the grassroots level. By establishing a platform for youth problem solvers and cultivating values of innovation and entrepreneurship, Samata Saathi’s nurtures a generation of agents for social progress. Ultimately, the organization's mission revolves around the creation of a just and equitable society that upholds the rights and dignity of all its citizens.
Key Highlights of our work
- Samata Saathi’s works on the concept of active citizenship and we train young people and local community leaders with paralegal training, we call the trained fellows as Samata Saathi’s who serve as community resource persons, disseminating information on access to justice and government entitlement schemes.
- We engage community leaders and young people as Samata Saathi’s where the implementation model actively guides them by strengthening their capacities and training them in implementation with toolkits, paralegal training and guiding them with technology and data capacity that will assist them to achieve maximum impact
- We work to create awareness and disseminating information to the poor and marginalized students about the government education entitlement, scholarships and skills development schemes to bridge the gap between law and action at scale by working with citizens and government
- Our Saathi’s conduct mentoring sessions, mental health and career counselling with respect to academic, financial, social, and other matters for students.
The Problem We Are Trying To Address:
The lack of awareness and limited accessibility to government welfare programs designed for underprivileged and marginalized communities present formidable obstacles to poverty eradication and social development. Complex application procedures, inadequate mobility options, and a dearth of information regarding available services create significant barriers that prevent citizens from accessing resources specifically aimed at improving their circumstances. Consequently, individuals from low-income and marginalized backgrounds find themselves caught in a cycle of poverty and destitution.
Despite the government's introduction of comprehensive initiatives, including fully funded scholarships for higher education at home and abroad, as well as free education entrance through the Right to Education, disparities in resource allocation, instances of corruption, and insufficient access to government schemes impede disadvantaged individuals from reaping the intended benefits. These barriers not only restrict their ability to improve their quality of life, but also hinder their access to essential civic services and hinder their employment prospects. Therefore, it is crucial to establish effective connections and address these challenges to ensure poverty eradication and promote equitable access to opportunities.
SECTION OF SOCIETY WE ARE TRYING TO ASSIST:
Marginalised communities, workers, rag-pickers, women, students, young people, trans and low income communities, differently abled, old people and people from challenged background, students from hard-to-reach Zilla-Parishad school, children of seasonal migrants like sugarcane cutters, brick workers and refugees.
Rationale Behind Samata Saathi:
The rationale behind Samata Saathi documenting the undocumented stems from the recognition of the systemic barriers and social injustices faced by marginalized individuals and communities. By documenting the undocumented, Samata Saathi aims to address and mitigate the challenges arising from the lack of proper identification documents.
One of the key reasons for documenting the undocumented is to enable individuals and families to access social security schemes and entitlements. The study conducted by Samata Saathi in Pune district revealed that a significant portion of the population, particularly Dalits and other backward castes, did not possess caste certificates. As a result, they were unable to apply for schemes specifically designed for their benefit. By documenting and providing the necessary identity documents, Samata Saathi seeks to empower these marginalized groups by enabling their access to essential social security schemes.
The lack of documentation disproportionately affects certain vulnerable populations, such as those living in poverty, individuals with disabilities or substance abuse issues, prisoners, minority ethnic groups, victims of natural disasters, the elderly, children, homeless individuals, and those with unstable housing arrangements. For example, elderly women, especially those in rural areas or urban slums, often have limited literacy levels and spend their lives outside formal sector employment, making it difficult for them to obtain documentation. This leads to their exclusion from social benefits and voting processes. Samata Saathi recognizes the need to address these disparities and works towards providing documentation support to marginalized individuals, including elderly women.
In addition to the challenges faced by marginalized communities, there is sometimes resistance from the community itself when it comes to providing benefits to female family members. This resistance further exacerbates the difficulties faced by women in accessing the support they deserve. The situation is particularly critical for young individuals from marginalized backgrounds who are unable to access essential social security schemes due to the absence of vital identity documents, such as caste validity certificates.By documenting the undocumented and raising awareness within the community, Samata Saathi aims to overcome these barriers and ensure that women, as well as young individuals from marginalized backgrounds, can access the necessary social security schemes and identity documents.
Overall, the rationale behind Samata Saathi documenting the undocumented lies in the belief that proper documentation is essential for individuals and communities to access their rights, entitlements, and social benefits. By addressing the barriers and challenges faced by marginalized groups, Samata Saathi strives to promote social inclusion, reduce inequalities, and empower individuals to lead better lives.
What We Do
At the Samata Center, we recognize the importance of community leaders in driving positive change and advocating for the rights of marginalized individuals. To strengthen these leaders, we provide paralegal training and develop their capacities and skills in implementing public policies. We refer to these community leaders as Samata Saathi, or Rights Associates.
Samata Saathi’s play a crucial role in serving as community resource persons, disseminating information, and assisting poor students in applying for the appropriate government schemes. They act as a bridge between the government and the communities they serve, ensuring that individuals have access to the support they need.
Furthermore, Samata Saathi’s embrace the concept of active citizenship and access to justice. They empower students and local communities to become problem-solvers and advocates for their own rights and interests. Through their training as passionate paralegals, they become well-informed individuals who are committed to making a positive impact in their communities.
We collaborate with activist and youth-led organizations to ensure that these dynamic grassroots leaders are engaged in meaningful ways. By leveraging their knowledge, skills, and passion, Samata Saathi’s become catalysts for change, working towards a more just and equitable society.
The areas in which Samata Saathi’s play a crucial role include:
- Information Dissemination: They ensure that accurate and relevant information reaches the communities, particularly regarding government schemes and policies.
- Application Assistance: Samata Saathis guide and support poor students in the application process for government schemes, ensuring they receive the benefits they are entitled to.
- Active Citizenship: They promote the concept of active citizenship, empowering individuals to participate in decision-making processes and advocating for their rights.
- Access to Justice: Samata Saathis work towards ensuring that marginalized individuals have access to justice, assisting them in navigating legal procedures and seeking redress for their grievances.
Through their dedicated efforts, Samata Saathis strengthen the voice and agency of the communities they serve, fostering a sense of empowerment and creating positive change from within.
WHY THE NEED OF SAMATA SAATHI?
- Eligibility Information: Samata Saathi serves as a powerful tool for individuals by providing them with eligibility information for welfare services. It consolidates relevant data onto a single website, making it easier for people to access and navigate through various government schemes and programs. This centralized platform saves individuals time and effort by eliminating the need to search through multiple websites or consult various sources.
- Assistance with Obtaining Government Documents: Samata Saathi serves as a valuable resource for young people by providing information on how to obtain essential government documents. This feature assists them in navigating bureaucratic processes and simplifies the often complex procedures involved in obtaining official documents. By streamlining this information and providing step-by-step guidance, Samata Saathi empowers young individuals to overcome potential barriers and successfully obtain the necessary documents.
- Enabling Youth: The Samata Saathi initiative supports youth in overcoming barriers and empowers them to take advantage of various opportunities and services. By streamlining social security scheme information and making it easily accessible, Samata Saathi ensures that young individuals have the necessary knowledge to make informed decisions about the schemes they are eligible for. This support enables them to access the social security benefits and services they require.
- Centralized Hub for Information: The Samata Saathi website acts as a centralized hub for individuals seeking information on social security schemes and scholarships. By consolidating these resources in one place, it reduces the burden on users who would otherwise have to search through multiple websites or consult various sources. This simplification and convenience enable individuals to make informed decisions about the social security schemes and scholarships they are eligible for, ensuring they can access the support they require.
Samata Saathi initiative is of great importance as it provides a user-friendly platform that consolidates welfare service information, including government schemes, social security, and scholarships. Its accessibility to feature phone users, assistance for obtaining government documents, and centralization of resources make it an invaluable tool in promoting inclusivity, empowering individuals, and facilitating their access to vital services and opportunities
JOURNEY OF SAMATA SAATHI:
The journey of Samata Saathi began with the establishment of the Samata Center in 2016 by Pravin Nikam, our dedicated CEO and Founder. This transformative journey was inspired by the realization that rural communities lack access to information and awareness about various social security schemes. Additionally, students in rural India face challenges in accessing information and mentorship regarding government scholarships and welfare programs. These individuals are often unaware of the opportunities that can significantly improve their lives, and their limited resources make them vulnerable to exploitation by unscrupulous intermediaries.
To address this critical issue, the visionary concept of Samata Saathi was born. The aim is to leverage technology and create a web or mobile application that serves as a crucial link between welfare schemes and the communities in need. By operating at the grassroots level, Samata Saathi seeks to catalyze the socio-economic upliftment of marginalized populations by empowering them with vital information and necessary resources. The ultimate objective is to break the cycle of misinformation, exploitation, and missed opportunities.
Samata Saathi embarked on a progressive journey driven by an unwavering passion to bridge the information gap and empower communities with knowledge and equal opportunities. By leveraging technology as a catalyst for change, this initiative works tirelessly to dismantle barriers, ensuring that no individual is left behind. Providing comprehensive access to government scholarships and welfare programs, Samata Saathi envisions a brighter future where every person can thrive and realize their true potential.
The Samata Saathi initiative aims to empower young people and local communities to access their entitled government benefits through active citizenship and collaborative civic justice solutions. It seeks to foster active citizenship, uphold constitutional values, and ensure the effective implementation of social benefit schemes, particularly for students. The innovative Samata Saathi website plays a crucial role in this initiative, providing a centralized platform for accessing various educational and government welfare schemes. It addresses the challenges faced by young individuals in navigating the complex process of accessing social protection benefits. With its user-friendly interface and comprehensive assistance, the Samata Saathi Portal revolutionizes access to welfare schemes, ensuring that young individuals receive the support they rightfully deserve.
The Far-Reaching Impact of Samata Saathi
The Samata Saathi platform has brought about a profound impact by empowering communities across various fronts. While its primary goal is to provide access to welfare programs, its influence extends beyond that, significantly transforming the livelihoods and employment opportunities of the dedicated Samata Saathi involved.
One notable outcome of this initiative is the creation of sustainable livelihoods for the Samata Saathis. By actively participating in the platform, they have experienced an improvement in their economic well-being. Through their involvement, they have gained valuable skills in digital literacy and capacity building, which have opened up new avenues for personal growth and development. Furthermore, their presence and efforts have fostered a sense of hope, self-esteem, and trust among the communities they serve, thus strengthening the overall impact of the initiative.
At its core, the Samata Saathi platform houses a comprehensive database of schemes aimed at ensuring basic social security for citizens. With a vision to train 5000 Samata Saathi within the next 5 years and positively impact 20,000 citizens, the initiative sets out to process and successfully fulfill 60 lakh applications, unlocking benefits worth crores across the states of Jharkhand and Maharashtra.
In summary, the impact of Samata Saathi is far-reaching. Not only does it facilitate access to welfare programs for citizens, but it also serves as a catalyst for transforming the lives of the Samata Saathi themselves. Their improved livelihoods and the sense of empowerment they experience contribute to a brighter and more inclusive future. Through these collective efforts, the initiative is making a significant and positive difference in the lives of individuals, creating opportunities and paving the way for a better tomorrow.
Samata Saathi ensure that students from disadvantaged communities, students from low-income and challenged backgrounds in India have access to equal opportunities:
- Identify the communities: The first step is to identify the communities that need support. This can be done by researching the demographics of the area and working with local NGOs and community leaders.
- Build relationships: Build relationships with the community by attending local events, meeting with community leaders, and building trust with the community.
- Organize information sessions, workshops, seminars : Organize information sessions, workshops and focused group discussions to inform the community about government welfare programs and social benefits that they are eligible for.
- Assess needs: Assess the needs of the community, especially those related to education, and prioritize the areas where you can make the most impact.
- Identify eligible beneficiaries: Identify eligible beneficiaries for various welfare schemes and social security programs and help them apply for these programs.
- Provide support: Provide support to the beneficiaries in the application process, including filling out forms, gathering documents, and submitting applications.
- Follow up: Follow up with the beneficiaries to ensure that they are receiving the benefits they are entitled to and that they understand the programs they are enrolled in.
- Collaborate with local partners: Collaborate with Universities, Colleges, local NGOs, community leaders, and government agencies to expand the reach of the program and ensure that eligible beneficiaries are informed about the programs available to them.
- Monitor impact: Monitor the impact of the program and make adjustments as necessary to ensure that the program is effective in providing equal opportunities to all.
- Document and report: Document and report the impact of the program to stakeholders, including donors, partners, and the community. This will help you to secure support for future initiatives and ensure that the program is sustainable over the long term.
In this way Samata Saathi assists students from disadvantaged communities, students from low income and challenged background in India to have access to equal opportunities.
We wish to democratise access to various welfare schemes for students from challenged background by supporting in applying for and benefiting from government-enacted social security programmes and social schemes by private entities . We are determined that every citizen has equal access to knowledge and justice.
We Catalyse Change Across Three Levels -
Individual, Community And Institutions.
We work with civil society organisations, educators, activists, young people, women who are change agents at a grassroots level within the community. Samata Saathi works within their local communities and villages and with other non-profit community organisations to create awareness among people in the community to get access to these schemes. Our programme is designed to grow and scale the capabilities of grassroots leaders. We catalyse change across three levels: individual, community and intuitions.
Individual: We work at a grassroots level to identify and empower individuals as Fellow to challenge inequalities and transform societies.
Community: We develop community-based organisations and local eco-systems so that they can play an instrumental role in connecting citizens with their eligible welfare schemes
Institutions: We try our best to hold government departments/agencies/institutions accountable on social, economic and environmental issues.
We Enable Samata Saathi in the following ways:
Samata Saathi assist in making sure that these schemes reach to the common people. And hence we take an integrated approach, by traning Samata Saathi with public policy frameworks and skill sets such as critical analysis, public policy tools, advocacy, campaign skills, data journalism, evidence-based research, survey analysis, and adaptive leadership. Apart from these skills we also focus on development of conceptual awareness of diverse policy challenges for which we have pre-seminar assignments that includes book and academic journal readings, as well as information from documentaries and videos. And this is accompanied by interactive lectures with policy practitioners, distinguished professors, scholars, and leaders in law, social sector, media and politics. We believe that our public policy framework coupled along with Samata Scholars insights, creativity, lived experiences, skills, and commitment play an integral role in finding solutions to the entrenched and emerging development challenges in local communities.
- Train and enable grassroots leaders as Samata Saathi by equipping them with public policy skills to achieve measurable impact in areas of gender equality, civic issues, health, rights, and wellbeing of girls and women
- Provide them with toolkits to disseminate information on government schemes
- Strengthening their advocacy skills and ensuring that they have a substantive voice
- Support them to fully participate and meaningfully engage in processes related to their role and responsibilities with other development stakeholders
- Training them Modules on Adaptive Leadership, Public Policy
- Interactive lectures with policy practitioners, distinguished professors, scholars, and leaders in law, social sector, media and politics.
- Equipping them with Design and Survey Research Tools on Public Policies and Governance Module Training
The Impact We Achieve:
Samata Saathi enables common people with access to government welfare programmes and social benefits for which they are eligible in the community. Access to Infoirmation and Assistance in enrolment for social benefits schemes plays an important role in empowering common people in the process, such as assisting farmers in obtaining crop insurance, assisting parents with information and the process of obtaining education subsidies under the Right to Education, and other social security schemes designed for women, people living below the poverty line, and the informal sector. With the support of Samata Saathi, we aim to achieve a positive social impact by reaching out to people in these communities to inform them about government welfare programmes and social benefits for which they are eligible. Our work also leads to achieve impact in the following ways
Increasing community awareness and knowledge on government welfare and social security schemes.
Increasing enrolment and creating access of people for government welfare programs and social security schemes.
Redressal of grievances related to welfare programmes and other social security schemes
Creating awareness on access to financial services given by the government for the poor and informal workers
Pre-seminar assignments that will include book and academic journal readings, as well as information from documentaries and videos
Preventing and combating violence against women by training local community stakeholders with legal mechanisms and advocacy tools.
Creating access to medicine and health care information
Creating access to education by equipping people with the right to education act
Creating awareness on land rights protection
Enabling persons with disabilities and mental illnesses by connecting them with social welfare department schemes
Providing free legal aid and access to justice with the assistance from Samata Saathi
Capacity Building of stakeholders
Advocating for rights of marginalised communities
