Udhyam
Udhyam has been designed to inculcate a spirit of entrepreneurship among village communities in the Kumaon region. With appropriate support, Udhyam entrepreneurs are able to create jobs within their communities and contribute to the local economy.
With limited opportunities for work and a declining agricultural sector, the hill districts of Uttarakhand are left reliant on remittances and have been witnessing alarming rates of migration. We believe that entrepreneurship can provide alternatives to migration in the long term and foster this through providing collateral free business loans and two years of mentoring.
The word ‘udhyam’ means ‘enterprise’ in English. Udhyam’s journey began in 2017, in the two hill districts of Nainital and Almora in Uttarakhand’s Kumaon division. A group of individuals who have consistently been working towards the betterment of life for its citizens launched Udhyam as a pilot in 2017, through the Metores Trust. It has an on-ground team of five managers that operate alongside a collection team and an advisory board. Today, there are over 250 entrepreneurs spread across the Nainital, Almora, Bageshwar, and Pithoragarh.
The first step for interested applicants is to make a telephonic call to us to register their applications. We enlist the help of B2R Technologies, a rural BPO in the area, to screen calls and speak to the callers about their ideas. A high-level assessment of the business potential, viability and ability of the applicant is made, and applications are shortlisted following an evaluation by an expert panel.
Once the entrepreneur’s readiness and the viability of the business plan has been assessed through an interview, home visits are carried out to establish a rapport with the entrepreneur and further understand the nature of the prospective business. At this stage, the Udhyam team is able to assess the entrepreneurs’ commitment to their business and whether they have a stable and supportive home environment.
The shortlisted applicants then go through a screening process, consisting of two interview rounds. Applicants are assessed on their attitude and motivation, the strength and suitability of their business idea, as well as the likelihood of being able to repay the loan.
We have subsequently observed that agriculture, animal husbandry, tourism, and shops constitute the majority of ideas.
There are two learning workshops per year, held at a venue accessible and central for all entrepreneurs. These workshops are an opportunity for them to learn from each other and reflect on their experiences. More concretely,, they go through sessions on costing and P&L accounting, customer service and interactions – all of which will assist in improvement of their individual skills as business owners and managers.
Pahad ke Rang
Covid has not left the mountains untouched. But they rose to the occasion. The initially unnerving silence and the absence of tourists brought the sounds and colours of the mountains alive .We have been working in the Kumaon region to nurture the aspirations of the youth.
As part of the journey, a brush with the bright visual arts faculty students of Kumaon University was perhaps destined. Meeting them leaves one full of for the future of the region, while simultaneously leaving you heartbroken – feeling their desperate desire to learn more than what they are currently being offered. They have outgrown the scope of their present curriculum and the gap left is wide. They deserve better inputs, a better platform, better careers and a more engaged audience.
We wish to help them in this pursuit and thus was born ‘Pahad ke Rang.’ We offered students what they needed: a workshop for learning facilitated by an outside expert and a subsequent platform for sales.
The first step was a 10 day residency hosted at Bob’s Place, Nathuakhan in September 2021 where 14 young and unique artists met under the Pahad Ke Rang umbrella through which 56 artworks were exhibited and sold.
We only grew from there. The second edition of Pahad Ke Rang had 20 participating artists from the university and an accompanying art workshop that resulted exhibitions in both Kumaon and Delhi’s India Habitat Centre that offering affordable artworks, landscapes and portraits.
The future is bright and includes further workshops, exhibitions and a permanent art gallery in Kumaon
Pahad ke rang is not a reminder of the lacuna in quality visual art education. It is a reminder of the resilience of these students and the fact that their talent has flourished despite it. We hope the exhibits will fill your heart with the same warmth that the curation filled ours with.
Mountain folk festival
Covid has taken a massive toll on live music and performances. Keeping this in mind, a group of individuals came together to host Kumaon’s first mountain folk festival: an event to promote Uttarakhand’s vibrant but lesser-known local music scene. The festival took place on the 5th of September 2021 at the Himalayan View Retreat in Ramgarh. Four local bands got together to perform Kumaoni and Garhwali folk-music, as well as the hybrid Indi-Kumaoni music. All necessary precautions were taken and the event was limited to a hundred people.
The Acts:
InternalEye
InternalEye is the moniker of multi-instrumentalist and producer Rohit Bhusan. He crafts chill beats and electronic soundscapes, inspired by jazz and classical music, paying tribute to his deep connection with music. he played his set alongside two talented young musicians – Vehaan and Jet.
Sahar
Sahar has its origins in Bhimtal, Uttarakhand and is singlehandedly responsible for the flourishing of Bhimtal’s independent music circuit. They started their musical journey from a small town and are today playing gigs through Uttarakhand. Their musical influences range from the more niche tunes of Uttarakhand folk music and the crowd pleasers of Sufi and Bollywood.
सुकून है यहां मेरा घर है यहाँ – *सहर*
Raagh:
Kunal Rana has been working in the music industry for the past ten years, while Suraj kumar is a music teacher working and performing for the past five years. Praful Nautiyal too has been enmeshed in the music scene as an artist for the past ten years. The three, belonging to Kanatal, collaborated their diverse sounds and performed a mix of fusion and Hindi.
Gaurav Pandey:
Gaurav Pandey is a new-age Kumaoni folk singer, representing Kumaoni traditions through his unique sound. He performs renditions of classical folk songs, that don a new avatar thanks to his deeply soulful vocals and acoustic guitar.
After a difficult couple of years, the hills were once again alive with the sound of live music; giving local musicians a chance to earn while doing what they do best. Taking into account the success of the event, the trust’s future plans involve more festivals and the establishment of Kumaon’s first music cafe.
India And Bharat Together (IABT)
India And Bharat Together (IABT) is an applied research non-profit currently working in Uttarakhand and towards empowering young people in rural and small-town areas with the agency to redefine their aspirations and pursue sustainable livelihoods.
Through a combination of direct interventions such as livelihood support programs and youth mentoring, as well as timely research studies to inform policy and practice, IABT works towards a country where geography no longer determines the future of our youth.
Research in rural parts of India has also shown that young people’s aspirations are limited to what they see around them. Where they are born, who they know, and what they’ve seen around them – these factors play a large role in defining their eventual livelihood pathways.
Other barriers like financial vulnerability, poor infrastructure, and community norms further prevent rural and small-town youth from securing the agency to make free decisions and pursue their aspirations, however limited they may be. These disparities have been further compounded by the ongoing Covid-19 crisis, which has forced the abrupt closure of economic and educational activities that previously engaged rural and small-town youth.
In 2019, IABT and Udhyam undertook a study of youth aspirations in 6 districts of the Himalayan state. Our study was based on insights on youth career options, the driving forces behind them, and the barriers that the youth face in taking actions toward fulfilling these aspirations. In 2020, IABT in collaboration with Integrated Mountain Initiative (IMI), conducted a rapid assessment on digital learning across Higher Education institutions in the Indian Himalayan region during the Covid-19 pandemic.
As a team, our collective experience of working with young people over the last few years has shown us that having a ‘skills first’ approach severely limits the potential of young people who do not have the exposure, agency, or awareness to pursue livelihoods that are appropriate for them in the long term.
Hence, we follow an ‘agency first’ approach through our model of building agency – the ability to make free and informed decisions about their own futures – through awareness generation, individualized mentoring, and exposure to local livelihood solutions and local role models. Through our two-phase model, rural youth develop agency to pursue sustainable livelihoods.
It is only after young people are able to make free and informed decisions about their livelihood and career choice that we work on building ability through skilling and enabling access to opportunities in employment (in the private sector, social sector, or self-employment through entrepreneurship). Our ‘Khojshala’ career exploration workshops provide youth with awareness about local livelihoods and exposure to role models, empowering them to redefine their aspirations and consider entrepreneurship.
‘Margshala’, a fellowship for aspiring and early-stage rural entrepreneurs, builds youth role models by equipping them with knowledge, skills and tools to start or expand a local business in sectors which are supported by local natural resources, such as agriculture, tourism or digital livelihoods.