Kherwadi Social Welfare Association (KSWA) (www.yuvaparivartan.org), through its flagship initiative, Yuva Parivartan (YP), offers a second chance to underprivileged youth and empowers women by offering skills training programs, ultimately leading to income generation. Over the past 25 years, KSWA has made a significant impact, enhancing the employability of more than one million individuals through concise and intensive courses.
KSWA collaborates closely with semi-urban communities, offering adaptable training and a robust support system, facilitated by an extensive network of counselors, leaders, trainers, and local partners. Addressing persistent challenges in rural areas, Yuva Parivartan's rural livelihood program imparts skills related to both agriculture and other life skills, creating new livelihood opportunities. Their operations are primarily focused on villages and small towns across India, with a particular emphasis on Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Goa.
- Over 1.25 million students certified to date.
- 91% of urban and 65% of rural beneficiaries now earn a living.
- 52% of beneficiaries are primary family wage earners.
- 80% of efforts directed at small towns and villages.
- 70% of beneficiaries are women, promoting women's empowerment.
Increasing beneficiary reach through digitizing the mobilization process
KSWA shifted 80% of its operations to rural-focused CAMPs. These CAMPs provide skills training for rural youth in farm-based and allied livelihoods. They offer over 70 courses aligned with industry standards. KSWA planned to scale from 50,000 youths to 2 lakhs youths and scaling with current processes presented challenges in tracking beneficiaries, livelihood opportunities, village assignments, and field coordinator performance.
To address these challenges, Koita Foundation introduced the Journey to Livelihood app, automating data collection and analysis. This increased efficiency, reduced paperwork, and streamlined program monitoring. It will also support KSWA's expansion to more states.
- Each area manager oversees 5-6 field coordinators, making it difficult to track village work. Coordinators received targets and tasks via phone calls, leading to information loss. High attrition rates among coordinators worsened information gaps, disrupting program continuity.
- J2L featured a web application for area managers to plan tours and allocate targets to field coordinators. The area managers could oversee all the information added by a field coordinator.
- This improved planning and tracking, leading to better adherence to targets
- Field coordinators are responsible for village visits, engaging with key officials, obtaining permissions and mobilizing students through various activities. They were managing these activities manually, using pen and paper for record-keeping and providing updates to area managers. Field coordinators also struggled to monitor their own performance and track targets.
- Journey 2 Livelihood mobile app helped field coordinators, to access tour plans, recording village and mobilization details and monitor adherence to assigned targets. The app allows coordinators to monitor village status and progress, functioning offline for real-time data capture.
- This led to enhanced outreach, optimized mobilization methods and quicker issue resolution enabled by real-time data.
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Improved tour planning and target allocation leading to
- Better adherence to targets and enhanced outreach
- Optimization of mobilization methods
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Availability of data leading to
- Quicker identification and resolution of issues
- Streamlined operations for increased efficiency.
Working with the Koita Foundation has been a very rewarding journey. Their involvement throughout the inception and development of the project, brainstorming discussions, handholding and supporting our organisation to participate in this digital journey is deeply appreciated. We have gained valuable insights during phase 1 of the project.
We are thankful for their personal visit to our centres and camp to understand the challenges ground staff are facing and their aspirations to have a simple and user-friendly system that will make the field staff's job simple and have more confidence in the technology.
And yes we got the best of the app with simple data entry forms created, automated reports and weekly review meetings with field staff to attend to their issues, clarify doubts, and motivate them. Thank you Rekha, Rizwan and Drishti for their precious time and efforts to make this journey a success.
Mr. Milind Chitre
CEO of Kherwadi Social Welfare Association