The Speaking Rickshaw is a media pilot project, which focuses on connecting the socially excluded and marginalized community of the bi-cycle rickshaw pullers in India with the mainstream society and providing a dignified status. The project will revolve around the daily life and challenges of the migrant rickshaw pullers (RPs) in big urban settlements in India. Through the use of use citizen media tools the stories of the RPs will be shared.
Topical focus:
Country:
What locality or neighborhood will your project focus on?
VARANASI
Describe the specific community with whom you will be working.
‘The Speaking Rickshaw’ will be working with the migrant bi-cycle rickshaw pullers working in Indian cities. The RPs are among one the highest socio-economically weak segments of the society earning and living on less than 1 USD a day. Coming from the lowest strata of the society almost 70% of the RPs can't read and write, the Speaking Rickshaw will thus become a voice of them to the globe and specifically to their stakeholders.
What kinds of news, stories and other content will be created?
A migrant RP has to come across various challenging moments to exploitation from his customer, rickhaw owner, government, police, health, drug abuse and so on. RPs are also classified as a high risk population for HIV and they serve as a carrier of the infection from cities to their wife in villages.
Through Speaking Rickshaw, we aim show the daily life challenges of RPs and advocating the same with the Government agencies and Police.
What technologies and digital tools do you plan to use in the trainings?
Describe the connections that you or your organization have already established that will contribute to the success of the project.
The Speaking Rickshaw will be implemented by the Dove Foundation, through our project ‘Aarambh’ funded by Mtv Staying Alive Foundation we have been working directly with almost 4000 rickshaw pullers (RPs) in four cities of Uttar Pradesh, India.
Through our existing network and community of the RPs we will role out the Speaking Rickshaw.
How many participants do you think will be involved in your project?
We will build the capacities of 60 rickshaw pullers in digital photography and digital video, as the major segment of the community is illiterate therefore we will be using a trained blogger to express the views of the RPs to along with the video and photographs.
In on-going project with RPs towards thier capacity building we are using peer to peer approach (cascading model), we will be using the same approach to built sustainability & ownership
Besides the microgrant funding, what other resources and support are you seeking for your project to ensure its success?
The rickshaw puller community has been ignored highly by the internationa lcommunity as well as the international orgainzations as ILO, International Organization on Migration, World Bank etc.
RisingVoices could support us in bringing in an international visibility of this challenges and exploitation which a migrant RP passes through daily in his life.
Contact name
Abhinav Singh
Organization
The Dove Foundation