through welfare and livelihood
driven initiatives
The Challenges Today
Arth Foundation
Arth Foundation works to uplift customer’s livelihood, nutrition & other socio-economic aspects. Through its social welfare initiatives, the organization believes in creating a holistic impact in the lives of its customers.
We encourage financial inclusion and livelihood linkages to bring about a positive change in the households of millions of under-resourced micro-entrepreneurs in India.
Education
Access to financial & socio-economic awareness leveraging livelihood enhancement & family welfare
Dignity
Empowering individuals by offering them a choice of opportunities to deliver an independent source of livelihood sustenance
Health
Ensuring sustainable nutritional well being to the unaddressed families to bring a direct impact in building livelihoods
Kalpataru – Welfare Bridge
ARTH launched its flagship program Kalpataru (meaning: a wish-fulfilling tree) to maximize linkages of the underprivileged, to government schemes and welfare programs.
Kalpataru is a powerful medium to promote awareness and applications for women built on the key objective of “Jaankaari se Unnati” (meaning: progress via awareness). Following this underlying principle, ARTH also conducts group training sessions. – Arth Sammelan, to educate people about the latest welfare and livelihood enhancement schemes.
Our Sakhee’s (meaning: a friend) working closely with these women have conducted 160 Sakhee Sabhas (open forums) and 70 Mini Sabhas to touch around 35,000 members to date.
Maximum applications have been made for Ayushman Bharat Yojana, Ujjawalla Yojana, PM Kaushal Vikas Yojana, PM Awas Yojana, Sukanya Samriddhi Yojana, Widow Pension Yojana, Atal Pension Yojana, Janani Suraksha Yojana, etc.
- The key objectives of Kalpataru are focused on spreading awareness and information about government support for the underprivileged people in the country. Other principles of the program are also listed below.
- To educate women in rural areas of the active welfare schemes being promoted by the government
- To identify specific schemes for individual profiles by mapping customer eligibility
- To activate the benefits of the above schemes for customers and their family members
- To promote applications from localized community
- To make customers self-sufficient and independent in making applications
- To provide assistance on completing the process and taking follow-ups until completion
Project Suraksha
Project Suraksha is a livelihood initiative for providing women with alternate opportunities to be economically engaged during the times of COVID-19. The program has enabled women in rural areas to directly contribute to the needs of the local community during the global crisis. Under this project, live training sessions were conducted for the production of COVID essentials, i.e. Face masks, Face shields, PPE kits, etc. as per the guidelines of MoHFW (Ministry of Health and Family Welfare). Post-production, these essentials were distributed in the local communities, district level institutions, medical centers, and health care workers.
The unpreparedness that every individual went through during the pandemic, was only more severe in the rural segment due to limited resources, disrupted movement, and migration of family members. The main aim of the project was to enable women to take charge of their household finances during uncertain times, even for the future. Additionally, other objectives included the following:
- Reducing the effect of discontinuity on micro enterprises
- Generating alternate income opportunities for women
- Improving community hygiene by supplying essential kits
- Enhancing the health care ecosystem of government hospitals and centers
At ARTH, both, the customer and the guarantor are educated about the Loan, Borrower –Lender relationship, the accompanying roles & responsibilities as well as basic principles of financial prudence during the compulsory Vittiya Pathshala (ViPa). Some of the topics covered in this session are pros and cons of savings, planning, and investments; along with product details, repayment schedule, digital repayments, the liability of the guarantor, etc. to ensure that both the borrower and the guarantor have well understood the Loan Process.
Vittiya Pathshala is held before loan disbursement. For our women micro entrepreneurs, Financial Literacy is a crucial training session for their understanding of Finances, since most of the women belonging to rural areas are financially unaware and new-to-credit. A series of training workshops are held at the gram panchayat level.
The basic aim of ViPa is to promote financial education for underprivileged women. Additionally, following the norms of responsible lending, the program also addresses to the following objectives for women borrowers.
- Promoting safe and secure credit and debit transactions
- Investing in non-fraudulent institutions
- Understanding the terms and conditions of financial instruments
- Building on financial portfolio and bureau score by engaging in appropriate activities
- Responsibilities and code of conduct of becoming a guarantor and/or a nominee
- Maintaining and analyzing business transactions efficiently
Women and youth belonging to the lower income groups in India are unaware about their nutritious dietary needs and food preferences due to lack of household nutritious crop planning/food budgeting. Awareness of sanitation and health hygiene is also low. Combined, these have a serious effect on the nutrition status of the marginal households.
The concept of Swasth Poshan Vatika emerged from the need to ensure that the nutritional supplies for poor and food-insecure family in the remotest of a village are being met healthily. ARTH aims to make sure that the future generations as well as the existing members of the family, especially children and women are not exposed to malnutrition and are able to receive appropriate amount nutrition in their daily diet’s. The idea is evolved on the principle of low-cost organic farming in a small piece of land either a part of Agri field or a small area adjacent to home or hut of the family.
The key objectives of the initiative include:
- Increase awareness about Nutritious food and healthy diet for women & adolescent girls, children.
- Reduce malnutrition and improve nutritional well-being of the poor and food-insecure family
- Systematic production of multiple nutritious vegetable and fruits in small plots in both summer & winter.
- Involving women and youths in household in farming and cultivation activities
- Encourage the usages of domestic wastewater
- Under the Pilot program that began in September 2020, following have been a few highlights:
- Lower income group households in the Raebareli district in Uttar Pradesh have availed the benefits of the program
- Hybrid seeds with higher content of Vitamins and Minerals are ready to be harvested for Winter. These vegetables include: Drumsticks, beetroot, spinach, potatoes, carrots, guava, garlic, pumpkin, radish, capsicum, etc.
- In partnership with Krishi Vigyan Kendra (KVK), multiple trainings have been conducted to spread awareness about the benefits of a healthy diet and the hazards of under-nutritional levels
- More than 200 individuals have now upgraded their dietary intake to fight against malnutrition
- Weekly evaluation of the developed kitchen garden’s shows healthy growth of plants and higher interest amongst families
To relieve the customers from the hardships caused by the loss of business during the lockdown.
ARTH offered all eligible borrowers the extended relief measures for the term loan installments for the period between 31st March to 1 st June 2020.
Basis this policy, the borrowers were classified under the following categories:
a) Category I: Customers who Opt-In for relief.
b) Category II: Customers who voluntarily Opt-Out of relief.
c) Category III: Customers from whom we could not elicit a response within 7 days of next scheduled center meeting date (scheduled repayment date).
d) Category IV: Customers with Conditional Opt-In for relief.
Under the Relief Policy, more than 2000 women in the rural areas of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana received an interest waiver for rescheduling repayments in the above date range.
For customers who opted out of the policy, benefits of Hospicash were extended to over 100 women. Hospicash was extended to protect the poor who have limited access to healthcare facilities and are pre-dominantly informally/self-employed. ARTH has been at the forefront of extending support to the marginalized to ward off the health emergency.
Our initiative to promote customer education & access to information during COVID – Khushi Chatbot was a digital financial literacy tool – using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. It is a two way interaction mechanism, to ensure timely flow of important and relevant information to micro-entrepreneurs.
A recent initiative to promote customer education & access to information during COVID, ARTH has developed a digital financial literacy tool – Khushi using Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology. It is a two way interaction mechanism, to ensure timely flow of important and relevant information to micro-entrepreneurs.
Currently, built with a guided interaction model, in the Hindi language, it covers a range of topics, including relevant govt. schemes, short videos on financial prudence, health and hygiene advisories, etc. which prompt customers to interact through simple numbers or customized questions.
Khushi has been constantly navigating obstacles created by the nationwide- Lockdown, by using advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques developed for Android users and an increasing no. of customers are now downloading & using the Khushi Chatbot.
Khushi has been constantly navigating obstacles created by the nationwide- Lockdown, by using advanced AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques developed for Android users and an increasing no. of customers are now downloading & using the Khushi Chatbot.
