Project-
Project Aarohan
Year: 2020
Team: Shreya Chopra, Hetvi Vyas, M. Alejandra Farías, Carrie Emblem
For: Business and Design Thinking course at OCAD University
Research question
How might we design a solution to support part-time domestic workers in New Delhi to stay healthy and maintain a sustainable livelihood through situations like the pandemic?
What we delivered
We designed a system and program called "Project Aarohan" to facilitate an upskilling program for domestic workers using the local infrastructure of local Resident welfare associations, Universities and NGOs.
My role
From research to solution prototyping stage, I was involved in the research of problem space, synthesis of insights into meaningful visualizations, prototyping the intervention and packaging all our outputs into a report and presentation.
Process:
"Hello! and thank you board members of the RK Puram housing society for taking the time in your busy schedules and coming to this virtual session. My name is Alejandra Farías, the Community Service program coordinator for Delhi University, I’m joined here today by Hetvi and Shreya, who are part of the Innovation team at Partners In Prosperity. I know some of you might have heard of the amazing work this NGO has done for the most vulnerable in India and is probably why you are here today. But I would again like to thank you for signing up for this project, as we know that very few Resident Welfare Associations would agree to first launch this program in their housing society but you did and you will be making history.
Now, some of you wanted the full details of how this project came together, and we are more than pleased to show you..."
The problem space
As per official estimates, there are 4.75 million domestic workers in India(most of which are female), a gross underestimation as other studies suggest there could be close to 50 million domestic workers.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Indian Government imposed one of the most severe lockdowns and quarantine measures in the world, and New Delhi was one of the hardest hit regions.
Power Analysis
The Power Analysis based the work of Hunjan and Petit and we used it as a framework to identify the different sources where people can draw on to gain personal power such as capital, labour and consumer power, culture, information, knowledge, networks, or physical power.
‘Power to’ is rooted in the belief that every individual has the ‘power to’ make a difference. ‘Power with’ helps build bridges across different interests, experiences and knowledge and is about bringing together resources and strategies. The faces of power can be:
Visible power includes the aspects of political power that we ‘see’– formal rules, structures, institutions and procedures informing decision-making. These control actions of others. Hidden power is exercised when powerful people and institutions maintain their influence by setting and manipulating agendas and marginalizing voices of less powerful groups. Invisible power operates in ways in which people will adopt belief systems that are created by those with power. Problems and issues are disregarding those affected by these decisions. This is when powerlessness is internalized. E.g., patriarchy, racism, corporate capitalism, etc.
We can see that domestic workers are left powerless and every other stakeholder has an influence over them, while the patriarchal system is perpetuated by taking away her voice.
The research question
How might we design a solution to support part-time domestic workers in New Delhi to stay healthy and maintain a sustainable livelihood through situations like the pandemic?
Proposed solution: "Project Aarohan"
Project Aarohan is a skill training program for empowerment and self-sufficiency of domestic workers. Living up to its name, as Aarohan means growth in Hindi, it provides an upskilling system that allows them to improve employment opportunities and job security, while providing them with soft skills that can help with rights awareness and de-stigmatization of domestic work as “unskilled” or unworthy of recognition.
These are the primary stakeholders involved in this project. The domestic worker is of course, at the heart of our program. Their employer, who is part of your housing society. You, the Resident Welfare Association or RWA, of course, our partnering NGO, Partners in Prosperity and us back in Delhi University.
Foresight and Evaluation
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