WHAT WE DO ::

Approach /Strategy

Vigyan’s approach is a mix of rights based (RBA) along with a bit of service delivery to meet the immediate needs of the community.
A rights-based approach to development is a framework that integrates the norms, principles, standards and goals of the international human rights system into the plans and processes of development. It is characterized by methods and activities that link the human rights system and its inherent notion of power and struggle with development. RBA is able to recognize poverty as injustice and include marginalization, discrimination, and exploitation as central causes of poverty. In RBA poverty is never simply the fault of the individual, nor can its solution be purely personal. However, RBA also refuses simply to place the burden of poverty and injustice on abstract notions such as society or globalization. Human rights claims always have a corresponding duty-bearer. A central dynamic of RBA is thus about identifying root causes of poverty, empowering rights-holders to claim their rights and enabling duty-bearers to meet their obligations. In this way RBA calls attention to a number of central features of poverty and development: Like all development, RBA implies an effort to improve the situation of people, focusing on their needs, problems and potentials.


In this sense, RBA relates to the same issues as most development initiatives such as food, water, shelter, healthcare, education, security, freedom to pursue life goals etc. However, it is central to the premise of RBA that human beings have inalienable rights and a deprivation of needs can often be addressed as a denial of rights. In other words, clean drinking water is not only something you need, it is also something you have a right to have as a human being. RBA is based on the concept that impoverished people must be protected from illegal and unjust discrimination, dispossession, denial and disenfranchisement.
Right-based approaches seek to hold governments and other duty-bearers accountable and encourage rights holder to claim their rights. Demanding accountability does not simply imply confrontation with the state. RBA also aims to enable duty-bearers to meet their obligations.


Networking and lobbying with the potential partners:
Our main strategy has been to bring maximum NGOs and peoples' organizations working on the same issue on a common platform and initiate collective action.
Networking with the potential stakeholders:
Vigyan has been proactively engaged in networking with the different stakeholders so that a holistic approach is developed and interventions are designed in a participatory way, keeping in view the various aspects of the issue so that integrated solution is worked out.
Media Advocacy:
The media, both print and electronic have been sensitized on the issues pertaining to the rights of the vulnerable and marginalized communities and involved through sammelans, press-conferences and grass-root testimonies and interviews.
Promotion of alliances of the most deprived vulnerable communities:
We always promote the inception of poor alliances. Till now we have facilitated formation of CBOs like Dihari Mazdoor Sangathan (Daily Wage earners Association), Patri Dukandar Sangathan (Street Vendors' Association), Mahila Mandal, Shehri Gareeb Sangharsh Morcha etc
Capacity building of the deprived community:
Once the organizations/ alliances are formed, we continuously strive to enhance the capacity of the leaders so that the alliance takes the decisions itself and the policy level issues as well as issues springing up at grass root level are handled by the alliances/ communities themselves. This not only ensures peoples' participation but also contributes in the sustainability of these alliances.

Extensive use of Right to Information Act:
The community leaders are oriented regarding the importance of the RTI act and well-trained to use it for procuring reliable information and making the administrative and political system accountable to them and thus ensure transparent governance pattern.

Liasioning with the government officials to ensure access to basic amenities/rights:
The community is encouraged to understand the procedures of different government departments and then apply for the various welfare schemes and facilities like the ration card, voter-card etc by themselves.

Right to health & Dignified Life

The right to health is a fundamental human right. It is enshrined in the UDHR and the ICESCR and recognized in numerous other international and regional human rights instruments as well as in domestic legislation in many countries. It is based on a broad definition of health that encompasses medical and public health perspectives. It accords priority to the needs of the poor and otherwise vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. It entails specific government obligations regarding health care and the underlying determinants of health, as well as obligations to ensure non discriminatory people’s right to participate in relevant decision-making processes. The right to health can be viewed as having two basic components: a right to health care and a right to healthy conditions.

Our current interventions under this right include two programs, namely,

  1. Clean Slum, healthy slum-for a better today & tomorrow which deals with the issue of improving access to safe drinking water and sanitation facilities and reduction in Diarrhea by 80%

Supporting Agency:
Water Aid

Core Objectives:

  • To create strong federation of women.
  • To improve water and sanitation facilities in selected slums
  • To implement water safety plans
  • To engage in policy and program advocacy and influence reform schemes like JNNURM
  • To collaborate with institutions and govt. bodies

Core Issues:

  • Access to safe water
  • Safe sanitation facilities
  • Adoption of key hygiene behavior
  • Community participation in policy planning
  • Promotion of innovative ideas & new technologies in community

Target Groups:

  • Women
  • School going children
  • Marginalized sections of the community

Working area:
Urban slums/urban villages in Lucknow

  
     
  1. Sure Start

Supporting Agency:
CARE India

Core Objectives:

  • To sustainably enhance maternal and newborn health status through effective community action.
  • To enhance systems and institutional capabilities for sustained improvement in maternal and newborn care and health status
  • To complement GOI’s & States’ efforts under NRHM & RCH-II

Core Issues:

  • Increasing individual, household and community understanding, mobilization and demand for maternal & newborn care.
  • Improving life saving behavior within household.
  • Increasing access to skilled care and commodities for maternal & newborn care at community level.
  • Strengthening linkages among community, public and private providers for maternal & newborn care.
  • Enhancing skills of consortia managers / lead institutions.
  • Strengthened linkages between public health system, private sector and community consortia.
  • Establishing community planning, monitoring and advocacy activities for demand generation and provider accountability.

Target Groups:

  • Pregnant & lactating Mothers
  • PRI, AWW, ASHA and other service providers
  • VHSC, RKS & Mother committees

Working area:
Rural blocks of Barabanki district

  1. Parivartan Program

This program aims at empowering urban poor adolescents through innovative approaches to enable them to make equitable and responsible decisions & avoid HIV infection.
Supporting Agency:
Oxfam Novib

Core Objectives:

  • Create enabling environment for urban poor adolescents to enable them acquire life skills and make healthy choices & avoid risk behaviour
  • Create a platform & organise adolescents for discourse on sexual, reproductive rights & HIV/AIDS
  • Advocate for & facilitate access to adolescent friendly health services

Core Issues:

  • Capacity building of teachers & Peer facilitators
  • Formation of Youth groups/Parivartan Groups
  • Conducting Life Skill Sessions for in & out of school slum adolescents
  • Development of adolescent friendly behaviour change communication (BCC) material

Target Groups:

  • Out of school children
  • School going/out of school/drop-out adolescents
  • Parents & teachers

Working area:
Urban slums/urban villages in Lucknow

Right to Quality Education

The right to quality education is recognized as a human right by the United Nations and is understood to establish an entitlement to free, compulsory primary education for all children, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all children, as well as equitable access to higher education, and a responsibility to provide basic education for individuals who have not completed primary education. In addition to these, the right to education encompasses also the obligation to eliminate discrimination at all levels of the educational system, to set minimum standards and to improve quality.
Currently we are conducting one program focusing on education namely-
Cluster Education Program

Supporting Agency:
Catholic Relief Services

Core Objectives:

  • Provision of quality education in private recognized schools
  • Increase the girl child enrolment in school
  • Community sensitization
  • Develop child-friendly school system

Core Issues:

  • Creating girl education friendly environment
  • Enhancing skill of teachers
  • Community participation

Target Groups:

  • School going children, especially girls
  • Teachers
  • Parents

Working area:
Rural blocks of Barabanki district

Right to Adequate Shelter & Secured Housing

Security of tenure is one of the cornerstones of the right to adequate housing. Secure tenure protects people against arbitrary forced eviction, harassment and other threats. Most informal settlements and communities lack legal security of tenure. Crores of people currently live in homes without adequate secure tenure protection. Security of tenure is a key issue for all dwellers, particularly women.
Adequate housing requires access to basic amenities, including clean and affordable drinking water, energy for cooking, sanitation and washing, waste disposal & drainage facilities and emergency services. When one or more of these attributes of adequate housing are not available, the right to adequate housing is not fully in place.
Everyone has the right to a decent standard of living. Essential to the achievement of this standard and therefore to the fulfillment of human life beyond simple survival is access to adequate housing. Housing fulfills physical needs by providing security and shelter from weather and climate. It fulfills psychological needs by providing a sense of personal space and privacy. It fulfills social needs by providing a gathering area and communal space for the human family, the basic unit of society. In many societies, it also fulfills economic needs by functioning as a center for commercial production.
The human right to adequate housing is the right of every woman, man, youth and child to acquire and sustain a secure home and community in which to live in peace and dignity.

Supporting Agency:
Oxfam Trust, Lucknow

Core Objectives:

  • Forming and strengthening the community based organizations at slum & city level
  • Advocating on the basic rights of slum dwellers through networks and alliances at the city and state level in Uttar Pradesh
  • Consolidating the processes and learnings drawn so far in the context of institution building and advocacy work.

Core Issues:

  • Identity & citizenship rights for urban poor
  • Collectively demanding tenure security and basic services by urban poor collectives
  • Recognition of domestic workers as workers
  • Better livelihood opportunities and enhance income for marginalized occupational groups

Target Groups:

  • Urban poor residing in slum areas
  • Domestic workers
  • Women leaders

Working area:
Urban slum areas of Lucknow & Allahabad district

Right of child to development & protection

The Convention on the Rights of the Child is the first legally binding international instrument to incorporate the full range of human rights—civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. In 1989, world leaders decided that children needed a special convention just for them because people under 18 years old often need special care and protection that adults do not. The leaders also wanted to make sure that the world recognized that children have human rights too. The four core principles of the Convention are non-discrimination; devotion to the best interests of the child; the right to life, survival and development; and respect for the views of the child.
Protection rights cover those pertaining to all forms of child exploitation and cruelty, arbitrary sepration from family, and abuses in the criminal justice system. This right includes:

  • RIGHT TO A NAME AND NATIONALITY
  • RIGHT TO EQUALITY
  • RIGHT TO PROTECTION AGAINST SEXUAL EXPLOITATION AND ABUSE
  • PROTECTION FROM ABUSE AND NEGLECT
  • PROTECTION OF PRIVACY
  • PROTECTION OF A CHILD WITHOUT A FAMILY
  • RIGHT TO BE PROTECTED FROM WORK THAT THREATENS A CHILD'S HEALTH, EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT
  • DRUG ABUSE
  • PROTECTION FROM OTHER FORMS OF EXPLOITATION

Currently we are undertaking a program named UDAAN supported by Action  aid.
Core objectives:

  • To provide child-friendly environment to the identified street children for protection and repatriation/rehabilitation of these children.
  • To sensitize and develop effective linkages with different stakeholders for proper implementation of child protection provisions.
  • To institutionalize a child-surveillance system for planning and actions to address the issues affecting them adversely.
  • To build a city-specific network of organizations and individuals for collective efforts towards rights of children.

The 3 broad areas of interventions are (i) protective (ii) rehabilitative/restorative, (iii) policy influencing measures to cater to the needs of the children without care and protection.
Target Group:

  • Street & platform children
  • Stakeholders involved in child protection
  • Parents/Guardians

Working area:

  • Urban area of Kanpur

Right to dignified life

Yeh Shaher Hamara Bhi Hai

Supporting Agency:
Action Aid

Core Objectives:

  • Making government school functional and enhancing girls’ education
  • Building  women organizations and enhancing their leadership
  • Promoting collective actions through different forums
  • Capacity building of the community led organizations
  • Strengthening the alliance of urban poor for policy advocacy

Core Issues:

  • Capacity building of the cadre of community organizations
  • Striving for inclusion of urban poor in policy planning
  • Ensuring rights of homeless & migrants
  • Establishing women leadership
  • Creating girl education friendly environment
  • Ensuring that each child in the work area gets quality primary & later secondary education

Target Groups:

  • Out of school & School going children, especially girls
  • Parents & general community
  • Women
  • CBOs
  • Homeless community

Right to Quality Education

The right to quality education is recognized as a human right by the United Nations and is understood to establish an entitlement to free, compulsory primary education for all children, an obligation to develop secondary education accessible to all children, as well as equitable access to higher education, and a responsibility to provide basic education for individuals who have not completed primary education. In addition to these, the right to education encompasses also the obligation to eliminate discrimination at all levels of the educational system, to set minimum standards and to improve quality.

A. SASHAKT BACHPAN PROGRAM :

“Sashakta Bachpan” Program works for ensuring non-discriminatory access to elementary education for the urban and rural excluded community in the selected area of Lucknow district, and also with proper implementation of Right to Education Act 2008 on different components as social exclusion, discrimination and rights of children. Under the child rights segment, the Program works specifically on Right to Education, Right to Development and Right to Participation.
Main objective of the project is to increase non-discriminatory access to Sarva Siksha Abhiyaan (SSA) promoting Universal Elementary Education.
Project works in close interaction with the CBOs, Government Primary School System and communities aiming at mainstreaming the proper schooling system for in-school children as well as for 100 percent enrolment of out of school children.

Supporting Agency:  PACS Program

Core Objectives:

  • To reduce discriminatory practices with the socially excluded community for promoting free and compulsory Right to Education to all children between 6-14 years of age.

Activities:

  • Community meetings
  • Formation of CBOs, as-Mahila Mandals/ Basti Committees, Urban/Rural Education Alliances, and Baal Clubs.
  • Training and Strengthening of School Management Committees, existed Governmental bodies and CBOs on the issue of elementary education.
  • Awareness generation and implementation of RTE Act’s provisions to support in Standardized education.
  • Alliance building of all formed CBOs for issue based advocacy.

Target Groups:

  • Excluded community groups like Muslim & Dalit community, Physically/Mentally challenged, girls

Working area:

The project is working in total 80 areas (48 urban slums and 32 rural villages) of Lucknow District including the blocks of Bakshi Ka Talab and Chinhat.

Universal secondary education is a pre-condition for equitable social development, the widening participation in India’s democratic institutions, creating an enlightened secular republic and being globally competitive.  Expanding secondary education and improving access, equity, management and quality is a major task.  Even though more than 95 per cent of children attend primary school, only 40 per cent of Indian adolescents attend secondary and senior secondary school (Classes 9-12), per the Government of India Census 2001.

B. PARWAAZ :

RMSA (Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan) roll out and enhancing quality secondary education in selected schools through strengthening school governance and management.

Supporting Agency:  Kusuma Trust UK

Core Objectives:

  • Ensuring the successful roll out of RMSA and ensuring that all young persons aged 15-18 years get access to good quality education
  • Developing a manual for the effective RMSA roll out with the state government and other stakeholders.
  • Strengthening 40 SMDCs in 40 schools to ensure community support and a monitoring mechanism.
  • Creating a district level alliance of members from civil society organisations, NGOs, education institutes, government officials and academicians from the project’s intervention schools to play an advisory and supportive role to the government for the RMSA roll out at the district level

Core Issues:

  • Access to quality secondary education
  • Strengthening of community based monitoring mechanisms
  • Roll out of RMSA in a proper way

Target Groups:

Students, Parents, members of SMDCs, teachers, drop-out students, School teachers, School Principals, Civil Society Organizations, experts, academicians, Education officers, District Institute of Education Training (DIET) Principals, Education department, Alliance members.

Working area:

40 schools in both urban and rural blocks of Hardoi district