by BISMumbai Correspondent

DRISTI [Don Bosco Rural Integrated Social Training Institute] Kapadvanj, actively involved in grassroot poverty alleviation and empowerment of people in the rural areas of the Kapadvanj Block of Kheda District in Gujarat, has inked a Memorandum of Understanding [MoU] with Haqdarshak Pvt. Ltd., a tech company with a repository of Government and private welfare schemes to enable citizens to access their entitlements.

Haqdarshak approached DRISTI for this collaborative venture to ensure those at the bottom of the pyramid in rural Kapadvanj are enabled to discover, apply for and avail of the applicable schemes. DRISTI one of the prime enablers of the ecosystem in Kapadvanj, readily agreed to this proposal, since it will help grassroot social outreach to multiply the social impact, merging with technological precision, pertinence and updation, for the benefit of the rural community.

The MoU signed will ensure that the availability of the various applicable schemes will be accessed by the deserving rural people, through identification and training to use the Haqdarshak android application. DRISTI will play a key role in identifying volunteers from various villages and provide training opportunities to understand the schemes, intending to benefit Self Help Groups [SHGs], village-level entrepreneurs [VLEs] and other interested rural people.

The initial training organised on 25 August 2020, was a success, with over 25 hand-picked DRISTI volunteers encouraged to follow-up and fill in the details of the deserving beneficiaries with an incentive for each beneficiary enrolled, from Haqdarshak Pvt. Ltd. DRISTI and Haqdarshak are directly monitoring the volunteers, as the target of reaching 6000 families is to be completed by December 2020.

DRISTI Government Schemes Incharge, Mahendra Macwan says, "this programme will serve dual purposes:it will help the families and at the same time with the rural youth will engage themselves in some constructive work for the needy." DRISTI Programme Officer Shailesh Parmar remarks, "this programme will help the young volunteers to boost themselves and will provide them visibility as they will be in the forefront in their locality. They will also enable them to stand out as upcoming leaders in the village."

DRISTI Director Father Mayank Parmar says, "this programme has been launched with the intention of activating the young volunteers from the villages, who will in turn form part of a larger volunteer movement and help move this initial scheme-entitlement and access, through the optimum use of technology, from individual government schemes-cases to the village level community-based schemes. This will help both DRISTI and Haqdarshak to achieve citizen transformation and multiply social impact through tech solutions."