Working together to transform the lives of scavengers

I remember the moment I met Vimal Kumar at Global Action on Poverty, March 13, 2015, in Ahmadabad, India.   We were both attending with the shared goal to end poverty through collective thought and action. There was a one to one interaction component to the event where catalysts (me) and changemakers (Vimal) met to discover ways to make system change via a Proposal of Action.

We sat facing each other along with hundreds of other pairs of changemakers in a large room.  Vimal said, "I only want you to do one thing for me".  "I want you to listen to my story".   Here is his story for you to hear: part 1 and part 2

We are spreading Vimal's success story thanks to the great writing support by Danelle Morton, and publishing leadership by Jon Dahl of OZY with the two articles above.  The next step is to build out the program to provide dignified jobs to the scavenger community, 95% of whom are women.  The entrepreneurial route out of  poverty is not so easy.  Scavengers facing such abhorrent discrimination find it difficult to get customers for their business. Instead, Vimal's idea is to provide education and training to the women to leapfrog them into real jobs near their community.  

These are talented and hardworking people who are overcoming huge living obstacles.  Given equal opportunity, we have no doubt they would be the best employees a company could hire.  They are held back, not for the lack of skill or determination, but by an age old system of poverty by degradation.  Working together with Vimal and my former Linkedin colleague, Marcella Cheung,  we came up with a plan to create a hybrid value job training and placement system. There are 3 elements: Corporate CSRs in India provide initial seed money for training, for-profit enterprises provide skills and behavioral training, and the Vimal's NGO, Movement for Scavenger Community, to identify the right training options for the scavengers based on their background and interests.  Once they are placed on the job, the women can pay back a portion of the training loan into a fund that is then used to support training of others.  

Eventually, this can lead to scaled efforts to place thousands of people facing caste or other forms of discrimination in better jobs across India and the world. If you have ideas, resources or wish to volunteer to support this effort, or just to learn more, please reach out to Vimal directly or through his initiative MSC