Solutions & Impacts

As per the United Nations Multidimensional Poverty Index Report 2024, 1.1 billion people are living in poverty, of which nearly half (48.2%) of these poor people live in Sub-Saharan Africa (553 million), and over a third (35.0%) live in South Asia (402 million). Of the 1.1 billion people living in poverty, over half (584 million) are children under the age of 18. 482 million poor people live in households where one or more children are out of school.

To end poverty in all its forms, the interlinked deprivations of poor people need to be addressed to reduce the intensity of poverty and empower poor people to exit poverty.

Hand in Hand Switzerland works towards identifying the gaps in the existing systems available to the poor and developing new avenues in the social infrastructure in urban and rural communities. In this method, we have developed a scalable, replicable model that addresses poverty by rectifying the underlying multidimensional causes with a community-centric approach.

We work with governments, international development agencies & banks like the World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank, and Asian Institute of Technology, to name a few. Our job creation model has been replicated successfully in many countries and even in conflict zones.

Our presence has left significant positive impacts among poor communities with whom we worked – in South Africa, Brazil, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Cambodia, Sri Lanka and India.

Hand in Hand Switzerland’s strategy – focusing on 3 E’s: Education, Empowerment and Environment

Our strategy addresses multidimensional poverty by focusing on income generation among women, education for children and self-sustaining local environments and communities.

Education

To eradicate child labour prevalent among poor communities and to bring children back to schools – school dropouts and children who never attended schools, our measures include

Identifying school dropouts through doorstep surveys conducted by forming mobilisation teams
Identified children and their families sensitised on education rights and measures of the government through awareness sessions
To bring them to mainstream education, support special training & teaching centres. In India, we support Residential Special Training Centres (RSTCs) that teach students in the 8-14 age group, equipping them with age-appropriate knowledge while providing nutritious food to tackle malnutrition and encouraging them in sports and art forms through sessions.
To ensure sustainability, rights protection committees are formed involving all stakeholders in a particular community.

Children Mainstreamed
into Government School

Empowerment

To overcome poverty, women-centric measures are in place to nurture income generation and entrepreneurship, and our interventions include

Develop skills by conducting training programmes in multiple skills that can be developed into profitable enterprises with minimal investments.
Provide them with education to have basic numeracy skills and specific skill sets to run businesses, viz., financial & digital literacy, training in business development, capacity development and adult literacy
Establish Microenterprises, Microcredit and other Microfinance programmes to support emerging micro and small enterprises mostly run by women
To create enterprises and help them procure raw materials and machinery, loans are facilitated through banks and in the later stage, to strengthen the enterprises.

Jobs Created

To complement our women’s empowerment initiative, wherein health plays a significant role for women to engage in earning activities, we support both women and children through

Facilitation of nutritional supplements offered by the government reaches children and women
Setting up teams to assess and monitor the health status of children
Providing immediate care for severely malnourished children
Facilitating community health clinics through necessary support with infrastructure and equipment
Mothers’ Collectives formation for health training on anaemia prevention and control, early childhood care and development

Environment

With Climate Change posing perennial challenges, our interventions aim to create preparedness among farmers and communities by developing adaptation and mitigation strategies.

Water conservation through watershed management: Preserve existing water resources through renovation, create new water bodies and recharge groundwater to store rainwater and runoff water.
Implementing regenerative farming methods with both traditional knowledge and contemporary agriculture techniques.
Create eco-conscious communities through awareness and waste management practices.

hectares covered
under Natural
Resources Management

Villages Uplifted

Dream Village Project

Focuses on building villages to overcome poverty and become self-sustainable communities. This is achieved through establishing measures to develop 3Es in the villages with a need-based, community-oriented participatory approach.