It has been a little more than two and half years since I concluded my fellowship journey with the American India Foundation. While the journey during the fellowship had been incredibly fruitful and transformative – both on a personal and a professional level, the journey post the fellowship has equally been an incredibly fruitful and a transformative one.
Post my fellowship, I decided to continue with my host organization – Project Potential in Kishanganj, Bihar. Interestingly and as destiny would have it, I moved out of the organization only a couple of months ago. In a way, it feels like my fellowship journey came to a closure only a few months ago.
Back in May 2021, as I was entering the last leg of my official fellowship tenure, the 2nd wave of Covid 19 had entered India, and was causing rampage throughout the country. Seeing the need of the community and how susceptible the community was to Covid 19, we at Project Potential decided to design and implement the Coronavirus Response (CVR) Project. The intention of the project was to support the communities in our intervention areas to battle the virus by providing awareness on appropriate behaviors to follow during Covid 19, the Covid 19 vaccine and aiding the communities in accessing the vaccines.
Without going into the specifics of the multiple activities undertaken in the project; the project was able to reach 105,000+ homes and 450,000+ people, while facilitating 280,000+ vaccinations.
While many stakeholders contributed to the realization of the above data points, the real driving force behind its success was undoubtedly the local youth who were enlisted as community mobilizers in the project. 300+ youth (more than 70% being girls), were onboarded over the course of a year’s time for this crucial role. These youth became the project’s last-mile connectors, diligently going from home to home, engaging with community members, and understanding their concerns and challenges regarding vaccine access and awareness. Simultaneously, they built trust and spread awareness about vaccines amongst the people. Meanwhile, the project team worked on building the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and networks of these local youth as they served their local communities.
As these local youth bridged the gap between healthcare and the community, they simultaneously earned a monthly stipend. For the majority of these youth, it was their first time earning money in their lives. Witnessing the happiness on the faces of many youth when they received their hard-earned money was infectious, to say the least. It took me down memory lane to a moment back in 5th standard when I had won a Table Tennis tournament and earned my first prize money. 
While we were all busy implementing the CVR project, a curiosity that would always engulf me was regarding the manner in which the youth were utilizing their stipends, or in other words – the spending patterns of the youth. Therefore, what was happening to all the money that was being infused into the rural economy of Thakurganj and Pothia block of Kishanganj district, in Bihar? (Our intervention areas).
Driven by curiosity, I collaborated with a local teammate to inquire about the spending patterns of certain local youth participants from our project. In this pursuit, we adopted a purposive sampling approach. We engaged in informal conversations with these local youth, aiming to understand how they typically spent their hard-earned money. I relied on the recall capabilities of these local youth for this exercise. It’s important to note that this endeavor wasn’t intended as an exhaustive research project; rather, it aimed to identify initial patterns and noteworthy spending trends among these local youth. The intention was to gain a preliminary insight into the primary areas of expenditure that prominently stood out for them. After interacting with a total of 31 youth from 7 Panchayats, the table below lists some of our findings/observations.
Post the interactions and crunching out of the data in the above format, a cascade of thoughts began to flood my mind. Among the myriad thoughts that swirled within, a particular one that stood out was the economic activities that commenced in our intervention areas, induced by the project we were implementing. It reminded me of a fundamental economic concept taught to me during my time in college/school – the significance of spending and the circulation of money within a region for the economic progress of that area. Now, I could witness the paramount importance of increased purchasing power in a practical sense.
Let’s consider the purchase of mobile phones as an example. Sixty-eight percent of the youth with whom we interacted purchased new smartphones. This aspect intrigued me the most. If this was the trend, envision the surge in smartphone sales within our intervention area. Afterall, we weren’t merely working with these 31 young individuals; our project engaged over 300 volunteers. While the pandemic forced everyone to go digital, many found it challenging to afford and purchase a smartphone. A smartphone can be employed for negative purposes, but it also equips many youths with a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips. Because these youths used their smartphones for project-related purposes, their introduction to using a smartphone occurred on a positive note as well.
Additionally, activities in the garment, jewelry, and footwear industries were on the rise. Debts were being gradually paid off, and spending on educational activities had increased. Furthermore, miscellaneous expenses resulted in further economic activities for small local shops and businesses. Local youths satisfied some of their desires, such as dining at fast-food joints, enjoying delicacies such as golgappas from street vendors, traveling to new places, buying gifts, etc., all while bolstering their presence in their households as they contributed to household expenses and provided financial support to their family members. These family members then allocated their expenditures across various areas, giving a further boost to the local economy.
Moreover, whenever we organized training sessions for these youths, we would provide snacks post-training, which boosted the income of certain snack shops. Simultaneously, our “Teeka Express” intervention, in which we hired vehicles (autos, vans, cars, etc.) to transport people to and from vaccination centers, generated income for certain vehicle vendors. Let’s not forget the income generation that occurred for certain ration shops from which we procured ration kits as part of ration distribution drives. Consequently, one person’s spending translated into income for someone else. What intrigued me even more was that all of this was happening while I increasingly read headlines about economies slowing down.
Upon reflection, out of the many impacts that the CVR project had, one of the primary outcomes for me was to witness philanthropy making an impact in terms of supporting rural economies, extending beyond certain developmental metrics. The community benefited, the youth benefited, and the rural economy in which our projects were situated thrived. I’m not claiming that the local economy flourished solely due to our efforts, but there was undoubtedly a considerable influx of money into the rural economy of Thakurganj and Pothia, Bihar. This realization led me to believe that, just as we recognize other sectors in an economy, such as manufacturing, real estate, and banking, we need to recognize philanthropy as an economic sector as well.
However, a larger point to be noted here is if we can draw inspiration from implementation models such as that of CVR? We often discuss employment in terms of creating tangible products, but here, the tangible product extended beyond mere material goods. It involved the dissemination of knowledge leading to human safety. Imagine having youth groups from villages acting as extended arms of the government and civil society, bridging the last mile to their communities. Numerous government schemes and programs often go unnoticed and underutilized by communities. Could local youth serve as agents to bridge this gap?
Similarly, effective policy making requires accurate, up-to-date, and relevant ground-level data. Can we envision a future where youth from villages fill this void, adopting a much-needed bottom-to-top approach to policy making? As these youths serve their communities, they are able to keep themselves occupied productively. Meanwhile, the government and other civil society organisations can focus on building their knowledge, skills, attitudes, and networks. Additionally, these youth receive a basic stipend throughout, thereby ensuring a constant infusion of money into rural economies. Pursuing such a model of youth collectivisation and development can thereby prove to be highly beneficial from multiple perspectives.
To conclude, just as I had stated at the beginning of the blog regarding the ways in which my journey in Project Potential was extremely fruitful and transformative, experiences and learnings such as those mentioned above serve as testament to the same. None of the above would have been possible without the fellowship program at the American India Foundation kick-starting this journey of growth; a journey that not only allowed me to experience all of the above but also provided me with valuable insights into how economics operates in the real world.
