Help a Community Dairy End Extreme Poverty
You can help launch a community dairy in one of the poorest states in India to create jobs for families living on less than $1.25 a day.
The initial dairy unit will create 93 jobs, providing regular salaries to women in households currently without any other forms of steady income. Women employed by the dairy are guaranteed a monthly paycheck, with additional compensation based on the quality and quantity of milk produced. Each will also receive training and participate in all stages of the production process including collection, quality testing, cooling, and distribution. Furthermore, the dairy replaces unreliable middle men and purchases milk at fair market prices from other households in the community.
Your support gives the entrepreneurs building the community dairy working capital and hands-on technical assistance through Upaya Social Ventures's LiftUP Project, a 24-36 month social enterprise accelerator for very early stage, ultra poor-focused social businesses.
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The Need
As the 1.4 billion people globally living on less than $1.25 a day, the ultra poor lead lives that are marked by highly variable and volatile circumstances in which they struggle daily to find stable shelter, basic amenities, treatment for poor health, and adequate food and water.
They are the most marginalized group in society: comprising the destitute, beggars, homeless, handicapped, and/or the severely malnourished. The ultra poor earn next to nothing, own very few if any assets, and struggle to eke out an existence day after day. For the ultra poor, irregular income is the single largest hurdle to creating positive change in their lives.
For families already struggling to meet their basic needs, a stable job represents a pathway out of a harrowing existence and allows them to make investments in their medium and long term futures. Knowing where tomorrow's meals will come from, ultra poor households can make investments in shelter, treatment for long term health problems, education and emergency savings to protect against future shocks.
In India today, the dairy industry is largely driven by small-holder farmers facing numerous challenges in production and distribution. The absence of electricity to run cooling and pasteurization systems means farmers are forced to sell their milk daily to middlemen at lower than market rates - a serious problem when sales from the few cows they own is their only source of income. By introducing formalized collection, quality assurance, and cooling mechanisms through new dairies, local producers' incomes are no longer wholly dependent on a system fraught with inefficiency and unfairness.
About Upaya Social Ventures
Partner since June, 2011
Upaya Social Ventures develops enterprise-based solutions to break open the poverty traps that prevent the poorest of the poor from living a life filled with dignity and means. By clustering quality employment opportunities with food security, health care, and financial services, Upaya is building an ecosystem comprised of commercially-viable entities – not aid-based programs – to ensure long-term progress out of extreme poverty.
Upaya’s Lifechanging Interventions for the Ultra Poor (LiftUP) Project is a 24-36 month social business accelerator program that combines the technical expertise and patient capital vital for the growth of early-stage, ultra poor-focused social enterprises.
In return, participating enterprises are required to share regular social performance data with donors as a way of quantifiably demonstrating the positive outcomes of their work. Furthermore, any financial returns generated by patient capital investments are exclusively restricted to re-investment in future LiftUP Project participants - compounding the positive benefits of a donor’s contribution.
Upaya Social Ventures is a fiscally sponsored project of the Jolkona Foundation. Upaya does not have its own 501(c)(3) status and Jolkona Foundation retains full discretion and control over donated funds. For more information, please visit the Fiscal Sponsorship page listed below.
