What We Do
At present Sukalyan reaches the unreached through well- planned and comprehensive programmes under four broad programmatic areas that are Sustainable Livelihoods, Financial Literacy & Inclusion, Civil Society empowerment and Early Childhood Care & Education which is leading to improvement of lives or empowering lives
Sustainable Livelihood
The entire nation is actively seeking solutions for productive employment and livelihood options for the 70% of the population residing in rural areas and facing joblessness. The situation with women livelihood is even worse. Despite acknowledgement about the need for women to be in the workforce, livelihood opportunities for women does not fare too well globally.In India the conditions are particularly dismal with India ranking 127 among 152 countries according to the United Nations Development Programme’s Gender Inequality Index (GII).
As an answer to this quest, Sukalyan launched and implements a livelihood programme that imparts vocational training on tailoring skills followed by, provide business ideas & marketing strategies, support to start their own business, hand holding support to market their products and ultimately the beneficiaries gets a livelihood and starts earning. Currently more than 1000 women are benefited through this program and the numbers are increasing gradually.
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Unique Features:
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Intensive handholding support to women entrepreneurs for initial period.
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Periodic capacity building covering topics of Entrepreneurship Development Skills and financial management.
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Facilitating linkages with Market and banking institutions.
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Monthly tracking of Income of women.
Debasri Halder, a Women Entrepreneur running USHA Silai Silai School in North 24 Parganas, West Bengal
Financial Literacy & Inclusion
A functional Financial Literacy Centre in Khordha, Odisha
People came to enquire about financial schemes at a Financial Literacy Centre in Jhargram, West Bengal
Financial illiteracy puts a burden on the nation in the form of higher cost of financial security and lesser prosperity. Lack of basic financial understanding leads to unproductive investment decisions.
To address this issue we are implementing a comprehensive financial literacy initiative primarily for women with a mission to empower the socially and economically disadvantaged communities to become financially literate and make sustainable financial choices. This is done through various awareness initiatives and Financial Literacy Centres (FLC) which are designed to raise financial awareness, promote good financial practices, and drive sustainable change in behaviour, ultimately resulting in informed financial choices and greater sense of control over one’s finances. This centre uses a combination of educational videos, experiential learning and financial planning tools to drive home key messages and benefits of using formal financial services. In last two years the project team had reached to more than 1,00,000 women and more than 30,000 women got directly impacted.
Unique Features:
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FLC program is first of its kind initiative being implemented with rural population.
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The centers are permanent establishments as opposed to the prevalent mobile Financial Literacy sessions that typically function for short intermittent periods
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FLCs are equipped to help women from the community by way of providing personalised training and support them in availing financial and other govt. services
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The Center have ready setup to be used for implementing livelihood promotion programs, skill development training and other awareness camps.
Early Childhood Care & Education
The ‘Sishu Tirtha’ ECCE centres has been conceptualized and established on the aspect of supporting the existing Anganwadi centres and not to run a parallel ECCE moduled centre at the community. It has been observed that the children do not receive adequate learning inputs from the existing Anganwadis and lack age appropriate development. This affects their learning at the formal schools and also their socialization process. These centres fill in the learning gaps among the children so that they achieve the desired development milestones at an age appropriate level. This centres not only enable the children to cope up in formal school appropriately but also help them in their social development process as well.
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Currently four Sishu Tirtha ECCE centres are runned by Sukalyan Welfare Society in Bankura, West Bengal without any external funding source. Each centre have an average strength of 25 children.
Unique Features:
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The ‘Sishu Tirtha’ centres provides for a child friendly environment.
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The Centres follows ECCE curriculum as per West Bengal state guidelines.
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The Children are evaluated through Continuous and Comprehensive Evaluation (CCE) process.
Sishu Tirtha Centre at Deuli village in Bankura, West Bengal
Civil Society Empowerment
NGO Participants at Probono workshop organised at Ranchi, Jharkhand
NGO Participants at Probono Workshop organised at Bhubaneshwar, Odisha
In India there are around 3 million CSOs which comprises NGOs, Clubs and Associations but approximately around 5% CSOs work actively across various sectors and contributing to Nation's development agenda but there has been a huge gap of capacity building of these CSOs as a result most of the active CSOs cannot perform with desired standards.
From 2014 onwards Sukalyan started various projects to empower this target groups through Capacity Building workshops, hand holding support, technical support to their programmes and connected with volunteers on a probono basis to meet their special skill based needs.
Past and Current Initiatives
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Probono: Skill based volunteering support lend to around 1500 NGOs from across 6 States in Eastern & North Eastern part of India, supported by India@75 Foundation (A CII initiative)
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Organised 14 Capacity Building workshops on Good governance, digital outreach, financial management and Social Media outreach; benefited 500+ NGOs in West Bengal and Assam; supported by Yes Bank Ltd.
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Organised a Capacity Building workshop on increasing online visibility; benefited 80 NGOs in West Bengal; supported by GuideStar India
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Organised 4 Capacity Building workshops on increasing online visibility; benefited 300+ NGOs in West Bengal; supported by DEF, New Delhi and PIR, USA
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Facilitated website development for 100+ NGOs in West Bengal; supported by DEF, New Delhi and PIR, USA
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Other initiatives
Sukalyan have had always participated across various social development movements and initiatives from its beginning, this is part of our employee volunteering initiatives where our employees have been mandated to do miscellaneous activities for at least 7 days in a year.
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Observed Daan Utsav week since 2012: organised cloth distribution during Durga Puja (festival in West Bengal), school kit distribution to 500+ children across Anganwadi centres, distribution of old-age essentials to 50+ old aged women
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Observed Giving Tuesday week since 2018: organised financial literacy campaings, school kit distribution to 100+ children, organised health awareness campaigns, organised health camps for aged in Odisha
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Observed National Volunteering Week and India@75 week: organised sports event for children, fancy dress competition, health awareness campaigns; reached to around 2000+ people through these initiative
Glimpses of various events organised