Livelihood
Live Projects
Access To Education Urban Livelihood & Microfinance
Movement for Alternatives and Youth Awareness (MAYA) Organic, Karnataka (2004),
($150,000)
MAYA Organic, (through a previous grant supported by AIF – see past grants), has organized collectives of workers in the garments, lacware and the construction sectors, and has facilitated the formation of worker-owned enterprises. It has developed a model of creating job opportunities for the urban poor, through systemic solutions in the form of creating sector-based collective enterprises, structured to have umbrella organizations for marketing, institution building, skill management, product development and business management. MAYA’s experiences of forming worker-owned collectives have demonstrated the need for scaling up this work and expanding it to different geographical areas.
In this context, MAYA Organic, through its Resource Center initiative, sees its role as one that goes beyond directly building and supporting only a few worker-owned enterprises. Rather, it sees the need to build a resource network within the urban livelihoods space, with an emphasis on the enterprise development model, given the systemic premise of its approach, in order that this approach develops as a viable model of scale. The Resource Center’s main activities would include documenting and mapping of at least 20 ongoing key urban livelihood initiatives across the country, documenting its own work in 3 sectors, and resource organization for technical and marketing support to NGOs and producers groups. The Resource Center would be supported by AIF for a period of 2 years.