Publication Category: Annual Reports

From the Desk of National Leadership Team

2022-23 was the year when the world returned to a new normal post COVID-19, yet its far-reaching impact can still be felt in various aspects of our lives. Although the pandemic has created deep scars on our emotions, health, economy, well-being, and peace, we have learned to survive and rebuild our lives and communities. The process of rebuilding has not been an easy one. It required immense resilience and hard work as the world’s economy decayed and social infrastructures became dysfunctional. The SDG Report 2022 notes that the current global economic recovery is fragile and patchy. It reports an increase in the proportion of the world’s youth not engaged in either education, employment, or training from 21.8% (2015) to 23.3% (2020) as a result of the pandemic. The Generation Equality Forum in Paris has seen a commitment of $40 billion towards economic justice and gender-just recovery. The decade of action of SDGs also emphasizes sustainable and resilient recovery. According to the World Bank, the female labor force participation in India for women aged 15+ years has declined from 30% (2006) to 24% in 2022 compared to 74% for men. 91% of women in paid jobs work in the unorganized sector with limited access to social security and dignity. Crime against women rose by 15.3% between 2020 and 2021, according to the National Crime Records Bureau. The COVID pandemic also heightened the occurrence of early marriage of girls in India with an increase of 17% in 2022 compared to 2019, according to Childline India.

A direct impact of macro economy has been experienced in Azad’s work domain as well. Women from marginalized communities needed immediate income and non-traditional livelihoods (NTL) became an accessible opportunity to them. They joined Azad’s transformative capacity building programme, Women with Wheels (WWW), and a sharp increase in numbers of enrolment and employable with driving license along with a 30% rise in employment of women as chauffeurs and riders, compared to 2021-22 has been observed.

In 2022-23, Azad’s roadmap has been thoughtfully directed towards rebuilding fairer communities by addressing the challenges that left many of our communities under severe economic and psychosocial stress due to the pandemic. In the year, Azad made great strides in popularizing NTL and creating more gender sensitive communities. For Azad, rebuilding encompassed a manifold process and Azad continued to 1) reach out to new areas, to vulnerable women and their families, encourage women to join NTL and young feminist women and men leaders to create a gender-just ecosystem, 2) enable women with skills of driving two and four wheelers, engage with new markets of gig-economy and make efforts to make it gender inclusive, introduce women in E-transport in order to ensure sustainability of our planet, 3) influence policies towards inclusion of more women in NTL and gender-inclusive infrastructures in public places, and 4) nurture collective and love-based leadership inside the organization.

Addressing structural hierarchies in society through extensive community engagement programmes has always been the focus of Azad’s work and in 2022-23, it has added value to the planned interventions for ‘Leaving No One Behind’. Strategies are planned to reach women in the farthest margins of the society and it has resulted in the inclusion of 20% women from minority community, 59% from marginalized caste category, 49% single women, 82% women below poverty line, in WWW training. Further, 20% are from minority community, 62% from marginalized social caste in the programmes aimed towards building feminist leadership among young women, men, girls and boys.

Through 2022-23, community change agents engaged with the Feminist Leadership, Men for Gender Justice and Azad Kishori Programmes continued to create gender-just communities. Collectivisation has been a pillar of strength to these community change agents in the work of rebuilding after Covid 19. The present and alumni leaders have together challenged gender-based violence, campaigned for equal sharing of unpaid care work by men in households, ensured women’s access to citizenship rights and social security schemes and agency to exercise their choices and join nontraditional skill training and subsequent livelihoods. Burden of unpaid care has been identified as one of the major constraints for women’s entry into NTL. Under the purview of the Men for Gender Justice Programme, a national level campaign ‘Ghar ka Kaam Sabka Kaam’ was launched in partnership with 15 organizations to encourage men to share equal responsibility of household chores. The campaign had a wide impact on social media platforms and on ground, across 13 cities.

Ministry of Women and Child Development, Government of India has launched a new scheme called ‘Betiyan Bane Kushal’ where women’s skill building in non-traditional vocations has been included as a potential option of skill building for young girls. Also, various state governments, skill institutions and civil society organizations have identified non-traditional skill building for women as a viable opportunity to expand women’s choices of professions and increase women’s participation in labour force. Humbly, we would like to mention that Azad’s work for last 15 years has contributed to popularize non-traditional livelihoods for women within concerned stakeholders.

This year, Azad joined hands with two civil society organisations, namely National Foundation of India (NFI) and iPartner India, to celebrate the achievements of 2 gender equality champions – Natisara Rai & Vidya Rajput from among 64 gender equality champions for fighting against patriarchal norms and structures and leading the society towards gender equality. The first felicitation ceremony was held on 26 November 2022.

As a feminist organization, Azad has always ensured learning and nurturing culture within the organization. Azad continued strengthening collective leadership and the structure of leadership has been revisited and restructured. Collective Leadership has been practiced across levels within the organization and transition of leadership from being founder-centric to a team of leaders has been instituted. While National Leadership Team, a group of three senior staff members, provided the strategic leadership to the organization, the Core Team, a group of five staff members, managed the forte of operational leadership. Azad instituted the Next-Generation Leadership Development Programme with members from across different programmes and locations to strengthen the operational leadership in Azad.

Azad’s Board continued to be pragmatic and supportive to new leadership. People from communities have actively contributed and advanced the interventions as per Azad’s strategic plans, the solidarity from Civil Society Organizations, NTL network members, partners and cotravelers continue to contribute and provide much-needed strength to the work of the organization. We express our gratitude to our donors who continued to support the work to carry out our mission. Last but not the least, a dynamic team with the right balance of experience and new ideas played a crucial role in fostering Azad’s work. We deeply appreciate each one of you who contributed to this journey last year and thank you for all your support, solidarity and inspiration!

With gratitude and love,
Anita, Shrinivas and Dolon

Read the 2022-23 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear friends

We are writing our annual report at a time when the world is being defined as BANI – brittle, anxious, non-linear and incomprehensible. The pandemic, Ukraine-Russia war, deepening economic recession, increasing influence of a right wing across the globe and depleting spaces for human rights work, undoing of gains made in women’s rights – all of these indeed make it a very BANI world. Yet, as they say the lamp shines brightest when the night is dark. It is with this understanding of reality and a resolve to shine our brightest that we present this annual report to you.

Whatever the crisis be – natural or manmade, it always pushes the underprivileged people towards more distress, aggravating further the structural inequalities. Amongst them, women and persons from LGBTQIA+, Dalit and religious minority communities have been at the receiving ends of all hardship. Women labor force participation rate (WLFPR) has declined to 9.4% according to the data from Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, December 2021, domestic violence has been increased 3 times according to the data released by National Commission for Women (NCW) and India accounts for one-third of the global child marriages which is estimated to increase by 13 million due to the pandemic, according to data by UNICEF.

Azad’s work addresses the structural barriers that prevent women from joining the work force. We understand, deprivation from remunerative skill and subsequent job is a consequence of the situation and position of the women in a society dominated by Brahminical Patriarchy. Our experience as well as various researches shows that women can’t join full-time job outside home due to mobility restrictions, violence at home and public places and huge pressure of unpaid care work. These challenges got aggravated over the last two years as markets shrunk, women were the first to lose their jobs and the last to get those back; unpaid care work burden increased significantly for women as work from home became the norm and care for sick and ailing had to be taken at home; and the shadow pandemic of domestic violence loomed large. We may not be in a lockdown anymore and the economy may seem to be reviving itself, but our experience on the ground tells us that families and communities that have been pushed further into distress will take years to recover leading to intergenerational impact. It is sad to note, that as a nation, we don’t have a clear roadmap on building back better post Covid.

Azad has, like many other civil society organizations, tried to keep its head above waters and continues to stand in solidarity with the marginalized women. We intensified efforts to build a gender-just ecosystem by empowering community leaders, supporting marginalized women, and promoting gender-inclusive infrastructure and social security for women. We introduced two-wheeler training for e-commerce jobs, made strides in eco-friendly transport with e-vehicles, and conducted research to influence policy changes. Our active participation in local and global campaigns advanced the inclusion of women in non-traditional livelihoods.

Our processes were flexible and as a resilient organization we adopted new procedures of work during lockdowns, such as, pick-up and drop services for trainees, using blended curriculum in training, internet support to the trainees so that they stay connected, using Google forms to understand socioeconomic situation of the communities, connecting with the psychosocial counseling and legal services whenever community women or anyone from our team needed the same. The Delta wave tested us, like everyone around us. We are grateful to have been able to stand in solidarity with each other and get on the other side. We mourn collectively the loss of several leaders, workers and activists of the civil society sector – their loss can never be compensated.

In October 2021, Azad launched Kamla Bhasin Award – Driving the World Towards Gender Equality, in memory of Kamla – our dear friend, feisty activist, and an inspiring leader of the women’s movement globally. The award has reached out to sheroes and heroes on the ground in all South Asian countries and we look forward to the first award ceremony in November 2022. In 2021-22 a phenomenal shift has been made in Azad’s leadership structure, that entails handing over leadership by the founder to a National Leadership Team. We have continued to nurture and support this transition through a thoughtfully crafted organisation development process. According to our friend, the feminist activist-writer Hope Chigudu, “This means immense individual and organisational change. I swear. It demands a fundamental shift of mind, resources, and energy! It also requires courage, humility, re-alignment of heart, mind, body and soul.”

We could not have undertaken all this without immense support from our donor partners who have stayed the course with us. We are grateful to have a Board that works as our lighthouse, holding us accountable and holding itself accountable to ensure best governance practices. We thank innumerable individuals and friends who have reposed faith in our work and supported us in myriad ways. We are grateful for the solidarity and partnership of the communities with whom we work. The trust that we have built mutually is the foundation of all our efforts. And last but not the least, the team of Azad – you rock!!! You rise up to every challenge and you build yourself as you build the organisation.

With this happy note, we invite you to read our annual report of 2021-22!

Much regards and love,

Anita, Dolon & Shrinivas

Read the 2021-22 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends, It is my pleasure and honor to share the Annual Report of Azad Foundation for the year 2020-21; a year that has put to test global humanity. The crisis created by the pandemic has been compounded around the world by climate disasters, with forces of terror and violence displacing and killing hundreds and thousands. Yet, there has been light – individuals and organisations who have withstood the onslaught and have continued to work with the poor, the displaced, oppressed women, men, transgender persons and people of all ages, and gender identities.

Azad Foundation has in its own way, stood in solidarity with the communities it works with and responded by adapting and being resilient; the theme of this Annual Report. You will read about it in the following pages. Despite all the odds, we have been able to ensure food security for the very vulnerable families and provide support to women survivors of violence. In a year marked with a historic downturn in economic growth, employment and labour force participation, we have been able to, not just sustain a majority of the women drivers in employment, but also ensure new employment opportunities for women drivers, thus enabling them to lead more empowered lives. We have also made use of this time to craft our new strategic vision, revisit our theory and understanding of change and develop action plans that will respond to how the world has changed drastically for us all. To enable these, and to allow Azad to continue to grow while deepening its roots, creative ways of working have been envisioned that will unleash the leadership potential at multiple levels. To begin with, I will be handing over the baton of leadership to a National Leadership Team in a phased manner. We will be spending much of 2021 as a transition year, to prepare ourselves, support the changing roles and programmes, build capacities, address anxieties and lay the ground for new initiatives. You will be hearing more from us on these changes over the year.

We have been blessed with support from friends and family, from all our partners – civil society organisations, individual and institutional donors and Corporate Partners. You have helped us through our ups and downs, as we piloted, experimented, learnt from our mistakes and persevered in our journey towards “a world where all women – in particular women from under privileged contexts – enjoy full citizenship, exercise control over their lives and bodies, earn a livelihood with dignity and generate wealth and value for all”. Personally, I have received immense love and support from you all, and I look forward to your continued love and support to the National Leadership Team and to Azad.

In Solidarity
Meenu Vadera
Founder & Executive Director

Read the 2020-21 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends,

These are strange times to be sharing our Annual Report. Despite the challenges that COVID has pushed us to reckon with, we did not want to lose sight of the efforts by the communities that Azad works with and what its team put in over the last year. As we try to make our way into this very unfamiliar, difficult future, we still need to keep the best of the past with us, for that will also pave the way to “build back better” hopefully. So, here it is, our Annual Report for 2019-20, this time only an e-version, to save costs and minimize any possibility of spread of infection.

As you will see, the year 2019-20 was also a typically full year, complete with its highs, lows, difficulties, and achievements. We decided to tell the story this year by sharing stories and voices of those people we normally don’t highlight. These are the people who make things happen, who put in long and arduous hours, who work with passion and commitment, and without whom there would be no organizations or institutions—“the Team.” At Azad, we have always believed that development or social change is not just about what we do or what we make happen out there, but it is as much about what happens to us—the doers, makers, or facilitators of this social change. Since social change is mostly about disrupting existing power structures that manifest in unequal social relations, it is equally important to continually reflect upon the relationships that we, the changemakers, establish amongst ourselves and with the communities. An important part of this is to view this relationship with communities as a two-way process, where we each learn.

We bring to you the work of Azad through the lives and experiences of some of our team members as they share what they have learned in their work with women and men over the years. So we hear Rama from Delhi talk about how she has grown over her eight years with Azad, Akash from Jaipur discuss how he has started taking responsibility for unpaid care work at home, and Shampa from Kolkata, formerly a trainee and now a driving faculty, express her aspirations to excel in her work. You will see the faces of all our team members in the pages to follow. This Annual Report is dedicated to them all, to express our gratitude for enabling us all to learn and work together, for bringing in their energies and hopes, their aspirations for a better world, their fears and concerns, and putting all of it into the pot called Azad Foundation, letting it simmer, sometimes boil, but finally helping cook the diverse programs about which you will read inside.

Since the Annual Report is about ‘the people behind,’ we also bring you the voices of those who support this team. We have Sarah from AJWS sharing her experience of supporting Azad and Susmitha, who has supported Azad’s work on individual fundraising for many years, sharing what it has meant to her. Individual donations comprised 5% of our overall turnover this year, and we are grateful to all those individuals who have continued to have faith in our work and stood by us. We are thankful to all the institutional donors (foundations and corporates) and the specific individuals in each of these who have been our co-travelers.

I cannot end this without mentioning the pandemic. We know it is going to demand the best from us. As per the World Bank (statement in HT, 9th June 2020), “The coronavirus pandemic will plunge the world into a severe recession, the deepest since WWII, shredding per capita incomes and pushing millions into poverty…. In India, the GDP will shrink 3.2% in the fiscal year 2020-21.” That is not all; Debraj Ray (Professor at New York University) and S. Subramanium (a retired professor from Madras Institute of Development Studies and a former member of the advisory board of the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty) have stated (in their working paper titled Interim Report on India’s Lockdown), “In India, a ‘developing country with great sectoral and occupational vulnerabilities, this dramatic reduction (in economy) is more than economic; it means lives lost… Lives lost through violence, starvation, indebtedness, and extreme stress are invisible, in the sense that they will diffuse through category and time.”

These are dire predictions, and we believe that civil society has always rallied itself at times of crisis—whether these are natural, human, or medical disasters. Azad’s work will have greater relevance as we rebuild livelihoods, specifically in urban spaces. Livelihoods for urban resource-poor women while addressing gender-based inequalities at home and outside will have to be among the more effective strategies for “building back better.” But the task is daunting, and we will need to pull together across institutions and sectors to build collaborations that can reach the last person.

In Hope and in Solidarity,
Meenu Vadera

Read the 2019-20 Azad Foundation Annual Report

 

Dear friends,

It gives me great pleasure to share with you our Annual Report of 2018-19. The report also contains a brief sharing on the celebrations that marked ten years of journey of Azad.

In a sense of history, ten years is not a very significant time frame. Yet, in the life of an organisation that is a significant lifespan. When we founded Azad and through many of its initial years, we were too busy putting in practice the ideas that we had dreamt of to worry about where we would be ten years hence. The idea of Women on Wheels was disruptive enough to occupy all our minds and keep us grounded towards building, nurturing and defining our practice. Over the ten years, as our practice deepened, it helped expand our own understanding of the spectrum of issues concerning women and work. The understanding we gained has in turn informed the practice on ground making it more complex and more nuanced over the years.

The world around us changed as well in historic ways over these ten years. There were no sustainable development goals (SDGs) when we started out. Global community had in fact not been able to deliver on the MDGs. But then the Agenda 2030 came up – a much more expanded and revised effort. Countries, regions, corporates and civil societies have all tried to locate themselves within this agenda of “leaving no one behind”. One year short of completing five years, it almost seems as if the nations around the world are once again not going to be able to meet their promises. On the other hand, there has been an unprecedented increase in militarization around the world, a rise of the right-wing ideology, religious fundamentalism and conflict leaving millions in very vulnerable circumstances. The economy of our country has as well been through unprecedented highs and lows. Large Corporates have disappeared, new ones that did not exist in 2008 have emerged and a consolidation of corporate power has happened with those who are better aligned with the political power. Within the transport industry, radio taxis were the new wave in 2008. The revolution of radio taxis has given way to the era of aggregators making transportation definitely easier, not necessarily safer nor more inclusive. Women continue to drop out of the labor markets in India. In fact, India ranked 142 out of a total of 149 countries in the economic opportunity and participation sub-index, as per the (World Economic Forum) WEF’s Global Gender Gap Report for 2018. Yet, there have been Malalas of the world who have quietly stood steadfast with their courage and beliefs, and like her many of the women trainees and drivers have struggled against all odds to transform their own lives and those of people around them.

Within Azad, over these ten years, we grew from one centre in South Delhi to three centres in Delhi, one in Jaipur and two in Kolkata. We built partnerships across several states in India and reached out to some countries in Africa and South and East Asia. Expanded presence has meant a bigger team, increased time spent on fund raising and challenges that come with the same. Starting with 9 women in 2008, we have been able to enable more than 2000 women gain employability as professional chauffeurs and have contributed more women into the driving industry than any other single institution in the country. That is nothing short of creating history! And we are proud of this legacy. Over the years we have been able to improve upon our own efforts, and a recent study indicates that we are able to deliver, on a conservative estimate, 26% return on investment. A return which will only get better and stronger over the years to come.

Women drivers continue to undertake amazing challenges in their lives, inspiring us to stay the course. Our work with young men in the bastis has deepened our understanding towards male experiences of patriarchy. The PARVAZ leaders through the feminist leadership programme continue to motivate us by their energy. They have been able to help more than 6000 women acquire their basic citizenship documents over the years. Documents which in this era of NRC are critical to a life with dignity. The hopes and aspirations of 4007 adolescent young girls that we have reached out to through Azad Kishori programme challenge us to work in creative and collaborative ways to ensure that they have opportunities to choose rather than just being forced into a life of drudgery.

Yet the larger questions remain. We are in a post Beijing, post MDG, almost post 5 years of SDG world, still there are 33 million women missing from the labour force, 15 million young girls as per the latest statistics from UNICEF are getting married before the legal age of marriage. Clearly we the people, need to commit ourselves for many more years of partnerships that are collaborative, of work that will be disruptive, towards social justice and accountability, towards ensuring a world where all resource poor women will have opportunities for livelihoods with dignity. While most investors, donors and impact funds are looking at quick exits or short time frames for supporting social action, we understand like never before that social action has to be with deep roots and sustain itself over long periods of time. Institutional leadership will need to be layered and multi-talented to adapt to a rapidly changing external context and to ensure that the teams are able to invest their best without exhausting their physical and emotional energies. Regenerative processes that are committed to transformative change at all levels need to be supported.

We have been fortunate and blessed to have had long term support from many of our donors and individual supporters. We thank you all for standing by us over the last ten years. We thank our partner organisations for your generous collaborations, our sisters and brothers and the extended community of Azad from around the world. And finally, the Board of Azad that continues to be our lighthouse through stormy and calm seas. Together we move into this next decade with this hope that “another world is possible”.

In Solidarity,

Meenu Vadera

Read the 2018-19 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends,

It is with great pleasure that we present the Annual Report for 2017-18 to you. Breaking boundaries that are drawn up for individuals by unequal social structures and power relations has been the core part of our work. We complete 10 years of our being. It has been an incredible journey for us, with all that we have been able to break together, build together, and learn together.

When we had started out, “women chauffeur” was not even an idea in the minds of people. There were almost no professional women chauffeurs in Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida. There were no discussions around this idea – neither in the industry, nor state, media, or civil society. We have been able to pioneer an innovative and “disruptive” concept and establish its viability irrefutably. Of course, a lot more needs to be done to make this a more popular choice for women – both as a career and as an option for safe transport.

Women chauffeurs have now become a familiar sight thanks to the media coverage like articles in local, regional, and international newspapers, films, and interviews conducted with them over the years. Key players in the transport industry have now started offering employment to women drivers, even launching special verticals for them. State Governments have started thinking that hiring women drivers is one way of making public transport safer. Of course, it takes more than a statement of intent to make this employment a reality, thereby making workplaces gender-sensitive.

Azad and its strategic partner, Sakha, alone have contributed to more than 1500 women today professionally empowered as chauffeurs. Of these, Sakha has been able to offer or facilitate employment for 650+ women chauffeurs. These include one who has just joined UNICEF as a driver, or others working with five-star hotels, Embassies, Delhi Commission for Women, Municipal Corporation of Indore, as valets with hospitals and hotels, with Sakha and other cab agencies, and Delhi’s first woman bus driver. More markets need to be created and nurtured, as we know from our experience that it is not just a matter of finding ‘jobs’ but of creating spaces in the current market as well. Ten women drivers could not make it to the job of a bus driver because they could not match the criteria of ‘height’ mentioned for this position. The driving seat of even the “low floor buses,” we are told is not adjustable and is of course built to suit the average height of a male driver. This is just one example, but an entire supportive infrastructure needs to be made available – safe and hygienic washrooms, safe and well-lit roads, creches that operate through the day, working women hostels, and shelter homes for women.

The women drivers, however, have sustained despite all these deficits of the ecosystem, buoyed together by their spirit to be free and independent. They have been able to provide more than a million safe rides to women users of their service and in doing that, earned remunerative incomes, becoming principal breadwinners of their families and taking decisions about their lives.

With support from Azad and Sakha, they have built a solidarity network that helps them to sustain not just their profession but also challenges they might face in their personal lives. We are inspired daily by stories of how the women have stood up against violence, have invested in their homes, ensured better quality education for their children, siblings, and themselves. This and much more we have been able to co-build.

The understanding of the challenges that women face in participating in the mainstream workforce led us to also deepen our presence in the communities. In 2016, we started the Feminist Leadership Programme that helps selected young women from the bastis we work in to develop themselves into informed, aware, and empowered leaders who can identify and support struggles of women in the communities. We have been able to prepare 55 feminist leaders who have together reached out to over 2100 women to support them in their various struggles – from getting basic citizenship documents to supporting them to handle violence, health-related matters, and many others. They have worked intensively in the communities and with the families of the young women to build a web of solidarity that can support any woman who decides to challenge patriarchal norms in any aspect of her life.

Alongside working with young women, we had also initiated a programme – Men for Gender Justice in 2015, for working with young men in the communities. We have been struck with the lack of opportunities that these young men have had to even question the cultural and social norms they have grown up with. At the same time, it has been heartening to see them reflect over their own lives, even be shocked with how they have lived, perpetuating what they now see as deep injustices. More than 490 young men have gone through our trainings and have committed themselves to a journey of questioning patriarchal norms at home and outside.

In Jaipur, we were also able to initiate and build a programme of working with adolescent girls in schools from classes IX to XII through our Azad Kishori 9 se 12 programme. We have been able to reach out to more than 2700 adolescent girls, providing them with opportunities to learn about livelihoods with dignity, non-traditional domains, and life skills required to be able to take their own decisions and build their own lives.

We have carefully documented our work and undertaken studies over the year to build new knowledge about working with resource-poor women in enabling them to empower themselves to gain livelihoods with dignity. We have built partnerships to help other civil society organisations initiate a “Women on Wheels” programme in Indore, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore. In 2016, we seeded a network of organisations working in non-traditional livelihood domains. Today, it’s a healthy sapling of 22 members, a charter, logo, and a substantive discourse beginning to build up. Together, we hope to engage with and influence policymaking and implementation around non-traditional livelihoods.

We realise that the challenge is huge. More than 19 million women have fallen out of the labour force over the last decade. Many economists and theorists are attempting to explain this. We understand the tight edge of the rope women have to walk on. On one hand are the shackles of social and cultural norms that govern the lives of women in India, restricting their mobility and forcing them to undertake endless hours of unpaid care work at home. On the other hand, markets are increasingly becoming liberalised and contractualisation of labour is the norm, making it difficult for women to put in the number of hours required to make any occupation viable. Men’s contribution to unpaid work at home is not equal anywhere in the world as per a recent report by ILO. However, in India, it’s an extreme experience where men put in only about half an hour per day into their share of work at home with women contributing close to five hours of work on a daily basis, on average.

The world over, less and less jobs are getting created. As per some projections, 40% of the jobs that exist today will be lost due to the emerging artificial intelligence. The SDG goal 8 aspires to provide full and productive employment to all men and women, which is nearly 470 million jobs worldwide. The challenge is huge globally and more so in India with its deep fissures of inequality. At Azad, we therefore understand our work as an action laboratory. As we support hundreds of women to gain livelihoods with dignity, we also contribute to building knowledge based on women’s lived experiences and help them amplify their own voices to build a deeper realisation of the barriers resource-poor women face in accessing livelihoods with dignity; what it takes to help them break these barriers and build sustaining and transforming change in their lives.

We remain grateful for the support of all our donor partners – national and international – who have stood by us, supported us, critiqued us, and nurtured us. We thank you for keeping faith in us. We have been humbled this year by an increasing number of individuals who have donated through global giving and our website. We have had several people volunteer their time and expertise as interns and volunteers, making our work a little easier. Last but not least, the Board of Azad – we cannot thank you enough for your leadership over these ten years, standing by us, supporting us, you are our best ‘est’ secret sauce!

With Gratitude,

Meenu

Read the 2017-18 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends,

Writing of an annual report is a frenzied activity in Azad, as we try to summarise a whole year of hectic activity, hard work, and sometimes chaos into a few pages that will hold the attention of all those with whom we want to share our work and learnings. I hope this report communicates to you our excitement and hope, as much as the challenges we face and learnings we harvest.

The year 2016 has been a rather tumultuous year for a lot of us around the world. From Brexit that shocked many of us to the US elections, the horrific images of migrants from Syria and countries in conflict seeking shelter. We have all witnessed increased intolerance towards minorities, the have-nots, hate-inspired crimes, and attempts to limit democratic spaces. In India, the year also saw an unprecedented clampdown on civil society by arbitrary use of FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act); student unrest has been responded to by the use of disproportionate state force; movements for rights of people – tribals, dalits, minorities, campaigns against mining, nuclear power plants have all had to counter the might of State. There has been a liberal labelling as anti-national of any sentiment that the ‘powers-that-be’ do not agree with. Demonetization saw a majority of us and members of communities we work with spending a lot of time queuing up to access our own hard-earned money. At the same time, outbreaks of dengue, chikungunya, and other viral infections affected almost one in every two households in large parts of North India, incapacitating people for considerable periods of time.

Yet, all has not been bleak. There have also been very inspiring and hopeful voices of resistance – across the world. We have seen thousands march for democratic rights, for pro-poor state policy, for peace and justice, across continents. As I write this, we just witnessed a great expression of people protest in India – NOT IN MY NAME – a citizen protest against violence, mob violence specifically against minorities – across more than 18 cities in the country. The expressions of protest have moved out from being confined locally to taking on a larger and more organic form of citizens coming together to express their anguish and pain.

We at Azad, locate our work, in the crevices of all of these changes in the society – nationally and globally – that threaten human rights, and the protest and resistance to the same. We understand, that as one organisation, we are a tiny drop in the ocean of social change, but as part of a larger collective of voices that struggle for equality and justice, we are a mighty life force. We work with communities across Delhi, Jaipur, and Kolkata and reach out to others in Indore, Ahmedabad, and Bangalore through partnerships, to make non-traditional livelihoods accessible to resource-poor women. It is important to note that this effort is embedded within an aspiration to facilitate a building of critical thought and reflection, not just amongst the communities we work with, but also within the team at Azad and its partners. We engage with young men to question dominant norms and understanding of masculinity, we work with young women to help them become feminist leaders and resources in the communities they live in, apart from provoking an understanding of work that goes beyond traditional roles of men and women – both in public spaces and at homes. We work with women who choose to become drivers to question patriarchy and re-shape the discourse on women and safety.

Our work, limited as it is in numbers, does offer a ray of hope, of what is possible if things were to change. As per the National Family Health Survey 2005-06:

• Only half the women in India are allowed to go to the market by themselves, just 15% have their own bank accounts.
• About 54% of women in India agree that a man is justified in beating his wife if he has any reason for it, such as wife showing disrespect for her in-laws or leaving home without telling him.

We are very proud to state that, once the women have been through the Women on Wheels training in Azad and gone on to employ themselves as chauffeurs:

• 100% of them learn to exercise their right to mobility and in fact majority of them are able to travel alone at all times of day or night in their respective cities – Delhi, Jaipur, and Kolkata. Some of them have traveled outside their cities; all of them have not only their own bank accounts but are able to also exercise their rights to control them.
• A 100% of the women will also not tolerate any kind of violence either at home or in public spaces.

Our experience has led to a deeper understanding of the world of livelihoods and young women, public transport and women, and over the year we have made use of several strategic opportunities to ensure that these insights from the ground can be further researched, written about, and shared in policy spaces. Our book “Lady Driver” published by Zubaan (in English) and Yatra (in Hindi) was a step in that direction. We have engaged with the process on monitoring of Social Development Goals – SDGs (especially SDG 4 and 8) and also participated in the Commission for Status of Women – CSW 61 in New York. The women drivers, as well as the Azad team, have spoken at several fora and communicated the layered nuances of processes of empowerment and social change. We have continued to strengthen the larger collective of women’s movement and draw inspiration through our involvement in campaigns such as One Billion Rising, 16 days of activism against violence on women, “I will go out” – a spontaneous protest of women to reclaim their right to public spaces in day and night, etc.

You will read in these pages more about how we translate our vision into reality. Needless to say that none of this could have been possible without the support of all our strategic funding partners – Human Dignity Foundation, Oak Foundation, American Jewish World Service, EMpower, iPartner, Mahindra Finance, Mahindra Insurance Brokers Ltd, COMO Foundation, and C&A Foundation – all of whom have been with us for two years or more. We are glad at having been able to build mutually respectful and energizing partnerships with all our donors. Last year we also established new partnerships with The Cartier Foundation, Sapient, DMI Finance, HT Parekh Foundation, and One Footstep UK. Also last year, for the first time, we undertook a fundraiser in the form of a musical – Mamma Mia! Again, directed by Ritu Chandra – a dynamic, enterprising, and well-known director. Mamma Mia! Again helped us build many new partnerships and extend our circle of support even wider. Our partners on the ground – SAMAAN, JAN VIKAS, and NEEVA – have come in over the years at different points in time and added to the enriching experience of the collective of Women on Wheels.

We express our heartfelt gratitude to all of you. We look ahead to 2017, wiser through our learnings, determined to address all our gaps, building further on our strengths, as we continue with our efforts to learn as we do and do as we learn….

In Solidarity,
Meenu Vadera

Read the 2016-17 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends,

It’s a privilege to be able to share our annual report for the year 2015-16 with you. The year was a very special one in the life of Azad. At the beginning of the year, Azad had completed seven years and two strategic plans in its short and exciting life. And as we looked towards developing a new strategic plan we realized that so much of the context around us that had informed the work of Azad had changed. To some extent, we feel we have been a part of this change – in our own very small and humble manner.

In 2008, when we started, there was only one publicly known professional woman auto driver. In 2015, there were more than 300 women professional drivers trained by Azad, on the roads of Delhi, NCR, and Jaipur all together. In 2008, none of the radio cab Companies we visited to understand the market were interested in the idea of women drivers. One of them said to us in so many words, “this won’t work, we have done it and written it off…” In 2015, one of the largest radio cab Companies introduced a special service for women with women drivers. The new aggregator models on the block are wooing very aggressively to bring women drivers on the roads.

In 2008, driving as a possible livelihood option for women was not a priority with the Government. Or if it was, it was lying in some resolutions passed in dusty files of bureaucrats. In April 2015, Delhi Transport Corporation got its first woman bus driver in the history of Delhi and in March 2016, Delhi Commission for Women recruited 25 women drivers for (wo) manning their mahila helpline.

In short – the scenario in 2015 was very different to the one we were starting within! We at Azad are thrilled to have played a role in this significant change of context. We may have pioneered it, or may have pushed it, or just made a case by persevering with the idea and practice of it. And we were supported in this, by a very large number of partners, individuals, and organisations who worked with us, critiqued us, supported us, cheered us on, and held our hand when the going got tough. The going was often tough.

But all of this has given us the confidence to dream bigger and aspire higher. We engaged with many of our partners, donors, friends, and well-wishers in March of 2015 as we embarked upon the journey to draft a five-year strategic plan (this time, instead of a 3-year one… 3 years seem to pass very quickly!!). Quite a few of you reading this would remember being there and helping us think through our core enquiries. And then we talked amongst ourselves and spent a few months reflecting, questioning, challenging, re-thinking, and re-examining our ideas. And eventually, we developed our core commitments for the next five years:

• 350,000 women living in bastis across Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Indore will know that they have a choice in life. That they can choose to say no to violence, to choose a livelihood with dignity, to be safe in their homes and public spaces, and claim their rights and entitlements as a citizen.
• 3,600 young women community leaders will be working as community change agents, providing information to women in their neighbourhoods, support for accessing basic citizenship documents, knowledge about how to file FIRs, and where to go for accessing help. 900 young men in these communities would be working alongside, questioning the stereotypical understanding of masculinity and how men should behave. They will be demonstrating caring and sensitive behavior, they will themselves not be violent, and discourage violence against women around them.
• 2,620 women will be working as professional chauffeurs, earning a livelihood with dignity and exercising control over their own lives and bodies.
• At least 4 organisations in different geographies would be implementing a Women – on – Wheels in their cities, adapted to their contexts and in partnership with Azad.
• We will have a more enabling policy context for women wanting to take on non-traditional livelihoods, especially in the field of driving.

Clarity unleashes energy. As we moved into the second half of the year, the collective energy of the team made so much possible. The following pages of the report share glimpses of our achievements with you. Looking back, the most significant part of these were the multiple forms of partnerships that we were able to establish:

• Our partnership with NSK-FDC helped us to provide the opportunity of “livelihoods with dignity” to many more women from the most marginalized sections of society. Along with SAMAAN in Indore and JanVikas and Saath in Ahmedabad, we are looking at enabling hundreds of more women to take on driving as a profession. We will be exploring more such partnerships in the years to come.
• Thoughtshop Foundation helped us mobilise our first few batches of women trainees in Kolkata and set up the Women on Wheels programme in Kolkata.
• In partnership with the global One Billion Rising Campaign, in its fourth year now, brought together many organisations, individuals, and most importantly the women drivers and trainees, across Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Indore who danced and sang as they claimed public spaces as their own.
• Our partnership with a group of women writers (Deepti Priya Mehrotra, Runu Chakraborty, Sunita Thakur, and Jaya Shrivastava) has helped us to put together a book entitled “Lady Driver.” The book chronicles stories of 12 women drivers and attempts to bring forth the complex nuances of what it takes to transform one’s own life conditions. We look forward to its publication in 2016.
• Strategic Partnerships with Human Dignity Foundation, Oak Foundation, Empower, AJWS, Royal Netherlands Embassy, Planeterra Foundation, COMO Foundation, and Global Giving UK enabled us to deliver on our commitments and also helped build our work further.
• Sakha – our most intimate strategic partner – provided employment to 75 women drivers in this year while engaging 14 women as commercial drivers.
• Our partnership with women across Delhi, Jaipur, Kolkata, and Indore continues to enthuse and inspire us as we co-construct together the ‘badlav ka safarnama’ (journey of change).
• Our partnership – young and emerging – with young men from across the bastis we work in fills us with hope of communities where women are able to freely live up to their aspirations.

The team of Azad would like to thank all the partners without whom this journey could never happen. We would like to retain the institutional space – of creativity and critical reflection that we have built with a lot of effort – as we move forward into 2016-17, with many dreams in our eyes, and songs on our lips!!

Till Next Year then….

Meenu Vadera
Executive Director

Read the 2015-16 Azad Foundation Annual Report

Dear Friends,

It gives me great pleasure to bring our annual report for 2014-15 to you.

The year that was has seen Azad grow in multiple ways. We expanded our presence to Indore, Madhya Pradesh, and as I write this, the first batch of women is undergoing training in Kolkata as well. We initiated a pilot residential Women on Wheels Academy in Jaipur—in collaboration with partners from Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, and Rajasthan. In Delhi, we piloted the Azad Kishori 9 se (to) 12 programme. We have also built on the learnings of our previous experience of engaging with men and initiated a long-term programme with groups of men in the communities we work with. Through our ‘Learning Journeys’ initiative, teams of staff, women drivers, and trainees reached out to more than 20 organisations across Kerala, Chennai, Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Uttar Pradesh to connect with and learn about other institutions also working with women in non-traditional livelihood domains.

We continue to collaborate and actively participate in collective processes such as the One Billion Rising campaign in Delhi & Jaipur and the 2nd Global Men Engage Symposium held in Delhi. An action research project was undertaken to better understand the aspirations of young women living in the slums and ‘bastis’ of Delhi. Our Research & Documentation team, established in 2014, published creative communication materials to be used by communities. We have also hosted several groups of students and professionals from different countries as part of their learning journeys and shared with them our experience.

The work of Azad has continued to receive recognition from other stakeholders. We were honoured by the appreciation and award we received from the Embassy of the United States and Shivaji College, New Delhi. One of our women drivers, Omkari, was felicitated by SRL Diagnostics on the occasion of Women’s Day.

All this action and concomitant reflection have enabled us to harvest learning as we move along. It has also fed into the strategic plan, which at the end of 2014-15 saw us embarking on. Many of you have been part of the planning process and have actively contributed through MANTHAN, organized in March 2015. The process has been intense and informative, with the participation of and consultations with our large group of stakeholders. As I write this, our strategic plan is in the process of being finalized. We are looking forward to honing our craft better—doing more, and better of what we have been doing.

It is an exciting juncture for us. The external context has changed rapidly over the last few years. Today, there are new markets that have opened up for women chauffeurs. Several State Governments have publicly expressed the need to have more women in the public transport sector. Women as ‘professional chauffeurs’ is a concept that has been established firmly—not just in the industry but more importantly, in the minds of the women themselves. Azad and all the women trainees, drivers, and their families have contributed significantly to this change, by boldly experimenting, persevering, and staying on course. There is still a long way to go to ensure that women occupy a strategic space in the public transport sector and, while engaging with it, also enrich it with their own experience, wisdom, and perspective.

The journey has not been simple. Perhaps no journey worth taking is ever simple! We—the Azad team, the women drivers, women trainees, and all those who have been part of this—have had our share of ups and downs. We have made mistakes, taken the wrong turns, jumped the red light, and sometimes found ourselves at a dead-end! But through it all, we have kept our faith, held ourselves mutually accountable, and tried to distill learning that could help build our next steps. The enclosed pages—some from the diary of a woman driver and others containing institutional narrative—provide a glimpse of this eventful journey.

We are grateful for having had, at all times, friends of Azad who have supported us, critiqued us, ideated with us, and given us strength. We have learned from our peer organisations and thank our partners for graciously sharing their wisdom and knowledge with us. We could not have traveled this far without the confidence and faith reposed in us by all our donors—Human Dignity Foundation, Oak Foundation, American Jewish World Service, EMpower, and many other individuals who have contributed. The entire team of Azad has also learned to break some boundaries within, while helping the women break boundaries around them. The Board has always stood by the organisation, guiding, advising, questioning, and always supporting.

The power of “collective energy” is immense, and we hope that this energy will be further galvanized to see many more resource-poor women being able to exercise their choice to livelihoods with dignity.

Meenu Vadera

Read the 2014-15 Azad Foundation Annual Report

“Begin at the beginning,” the King said very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.” – Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Dear Friends,

“Begin at the beginning” is very sound advice, except that sometimes it becomes very difficult to follow. I feel in the same boat now as I must talk about the end before I get to the beginning.

The end is the culmination of efforts in the year(s) gone by and its presentation in the form of this report. I believe that if it was not for this wonderful group of women called “Giving Women,” this report would not have been written in this beautiful format.

Working with this gorgeous group across continents, in writing about our work has been a great experience of collective energy and thought, of harmony and solidarity built across countries. In many cases, we have not even met each other, but seemed to understand with little difficulty the millions of comments and feedback, all the innumerable times the drafts went up and down. The process of writing the report rhymed hugely with what we at Azad and Sakha hold very dear—the principle of collective!

So I am thrilled to share with you our Annual Report and also a report of the last many years. Since this is the first time we decided to make a formal public document, we decided to do it such that the report spans the period of the last four years of Azad’s work, and in between zooms into “the year that was” to talk more specifically of the events and processes in the last year.

As many of you would already know, when we started with this initiative, “Women on Wheels,” and set up two institutions, Azad Foundation (the not-for-profit) and Sakha (the for-profit), it was amidst a lot of skepticism. We ourselves were not sure, as it was a road not trodden before. We made way as we got along, stumbled, made mistakes, burned our fingers, landed in many police stations across the city, and learned from all of it. Our challenges have been many. Some of these you will read about, and there have been others as well—raising resources, cracking through the mindsets on either end of the spectrum to mobilize young women to become drivers and to find clients who would like to employ them. So we learned to celebrate every small victory—getting a learner’s license, getting a permanent license; landing a job; acquiring a commercial license. The everyday stories we hear about women drivers and the things they have been able to do with their lives have inspired us and continue to fill us with energy. Just as I write this, I am getting emails about how wonderfully one of our chauffeurs made a presentation at the UNESCO conference in Jakarta, Indonesia about her experience of marginalization, survival, and transformation.

It was the first time she had traveled abroad and suddenly this has forever altered her status even in her extended family. A woman with three daughters and whose husband had walked out on her, she has so empowered herself that she has become an inspirational role model for her daughters. The sense of pride in their mother shines in their eyes.

We did one documentation, ‘Parvaz,’ which was released in March 2012 by our Chief Minister of Delhi, Mrs. Sheila Dixit. Some of you were perhaps with us on that day and surely experienced the energy and hope pulsating through all of us. A year down the line, we already feel it is inadequate and does not capture even half the story. We need to find more creative ways of expressing the change that we see happening every day in front of us, its complex nature, its ups and downs, and its multi-dimensional form. Change is never a linear process, and we have many times had to cross the same bridge several times. It would be very useful to share this learning, and we intend on doing that in this coming year. We hope this report will convey some measure of this excitement to you.

We were part of the One Billion Rising and have contributed to the collective energy as much as received energy by plugging into a global campaign for women, by women. The movement calls for an end to violence and for justice and gender equality. A lot of what we did as part of the campaign has already become a part of our regular work. Participating in these campaigns, meeting and interacting with celebrities and dignitaries, working round the clock 24/7, and handling the daily challenges of being a woman driver on the road, have given a lot of opportunities for them to learn, grow, and build confidence. Today, the nearly 60 professional drivers that we have are a force to reckon with for anyone. Not only are they the chief breadwinners in their families, but I can say here with confidence that the majority of them will not accept violence in their daily lives.

Many of the younger single women have postponed their initially planned early marriages and are making their own decisions about whom to spend their lives with. On the other hand, there are perhaps an equal number who have been trained over the years but who did not take up employment. We have, however, learned to persevere. We have also learned that our role is to continue planting the seed. There are those who blossom early and others who blossom late. And then there are always those seeds that remain seeds, holding within them their potential. But eventually, we will have a green forest of tall trees, bringing in with it the fresh air of change!

With just a small note of thanks to all our funding partners. Your support and faith in us have carried us thus far and will hopefully take us further.

The success of our work we owe to the learnings and experiences of the innumerable women and men who, over the last hundreds of years of the women’s movement, have paved the ground and nurtured our minds and souls with knowledge and wisdom about women’s rights. We build on that ground and humbly take full ownership of the mistakes we make.

I go back to Alice in Wonderland and would like to believe that your three minutes would definitely tempt you to read further.

“I have proved by actual test that a letter that takes an hour to write takes only about three minutes to read.” -Lewis Carroll

Meenu Vadera

Executive Director

Read the 2012-13 Azad Foundation Annual Report