Shivia

I founded Shivia in 2008 and since then we have been working with some of the poorest families in West Bengal to help them to create livelihoods with dignity.  We founded the organisation Nirdhan in 2011 to implement our three main programmes: Poultry Development Services, Agri-management Services and Goat farming.  After ten years of tweaking and re-tweaking the models and proving that our farmers can get themselves out of poverty in a sustainable way, we would like to expand pan-India.  We founded Shivia Livelihoods Foundation in Mumbai in October 2020 to do just this.  We want to partner with NGOs throughout India to replicate our models using the manuals we have developed, tweaking them to suit local contexts. If we win the Elevate Prize, we will fund what we call "Livelihood Service Providers" (field staff) to introduce, replicate and sustain our programmes in partnership with existing NGOs also dedicated to livelihoods and working with the poorest, most marginalised communities.  We would love to tap into the Elevate network to introduce us to NGO partners who may be interested in replicating the models as well as helping us to improve our effectiveness and impact measurement through the use of technology. 

My father was brought up in Kolkata and knew Mother Teresa well. I was brought up hearing stories from Dad which captured my imagination so when I was 16, I asked Mother if I could come and work with her for a year before going to university.  She said: “Olly, if you are coming for a year, go and work for my friend KC Thomas at Familia Home in the villages of Bengal as he rarely gets visitors".  So that is what I did and it changed my life forever. When there in 1999, I was really struck by the poverty where the women in particular had no access to finance or skills they could commoditise. At Oxford, I based my undergrad and Masters degrees back in Bengal researching the communities and the poverty they faced.  These experiences left something very deep and profound within me and I knew that helping these communities is what I wanted to dedicate my life to.  In 2008, I launched Shivia and our mission is to empower the poorest to create livelihoods, boost income and inspire permanent change.  Today we cover 1,500 villages and work with 20,000 families.  We now want to expand pan-India. 

The population of West Bengal is 99 million and approximately 20 million people live below the poverty line of $1.90 a day.  Cultural systems and religious beliefs keep lower caste families, and particularly women, in poverty.  Lack of job opportunities in rural areas causes men to migrate to the cities or other states for work. Women and children remain in the villages with little opportunity to earn.  With few job opportunities, compounded by a poor education and lack of economic skills, many women rely on casual agricultural labour for as little as $1.90 a day for, on average, 210 days a year (c. $400 a year).  Our team conducted a year’s research in 2010 looking at market-driven enterprises that families could do from home, if trained in the correct skill-sets. For the last ten years, we have been helping these extremely poor women – and their families – to earn a livelihood from home with dignity.   Our flagship programme is Poultry Development Services  provides everything a family needs to start and sustain a poultry enterprise, training over six months in all aspects of poultry husbandry and then transitioning into groups so farmers can operate on their own in future. 

We launched Poultry Development Services in 2011 in response to the need identified.  Previously, the government had handed out country chickens but without training so chick mortality rates were high and farmers lost confidence.  Our approach with PDS - the only programme like it that we know of in the region - is delivered through training and delivering poultry toolkits which provide everything a family needs to start and sustain their new enterprise: ten one day old chicks; vaccinations to prevent chick disease and mortality; initial feed and, most importantly, training in all aspects of poultry husbandry, coop building, producing feed, disease prevention, selling the produce (eggs and birds) and financial management.  Typically, after two years, we put farmers into groups and link them to suppliers so they can procure the toolkits themselves, benefit from economies of scale and be independent of us.  Our innovations include affordable methods of care: rubbing tomato skins on the birds as a relief from pox, preparing low-cost feed at home by using subabul tree leaves for protein supplements and growing azolla given the plentiful water supplies in Bengal and usingayurvedic or homeopathy medicines instead of allopathy or antibiotics to prevent or cure diseases. 

We place huge emphasis on training to make our programmes successful. Our impact assessments and feedback from our beneficiaries show up to 30% increase in household income from the sale of eggs alone.  Women become empowered by the ability to earn money for themselves and invariably use their earnings for the benefit of the whole family.  Children benefit from better access to education as there is money to pay for school uniforms, books and private tuition to pass the exams to stay in school.  Families have a healthier diet – chicken and eggs are a great source of protein.  We are proud that the skills learned and profits earned can be used to start a new, different enterprise too.  Since we started, we have distributed c.95,000  toolkits to a total of 15,000 farmers across 1,500 villages.  We have thousands of stories of women who used to speak behind their saris but are now out in the communities telling their stories and acting as role models for future generations.  In our Agri-management Services, farmers are now earning 30-40% more income from their new farming techniques and whole communities are switching to bio pesticides and bio fertilisers inspired by what they see.