YellowBag Foundation

We work to better the skills & confidence of children. Our children are born to economically disadvantaged parents and live in urban slums. These locations are thickly populated with just about 100sq feet for a family of four and a shared toilet for 5 to 10 families. We spend our time & resources to positively inspire them, provide them with skills and a better space.

We will spend as follows:

1. Activities to positively inspire children - 40%
2. Activities to build skills & confidence - 40%
3. Space & Infrastructure - 20%

My wife and I grew up in middle class families and worked in multinational companies for 10 years. Our education and exposure were useful in solving the problems of our company. However they had no local impact on the community which raised us.  We had the choice of selling our knowledge in exchange for a bad planet or use our knowledge to build a better world. 

In the year 2014, we quit our Jobs and returned to our native town and started a social enterprise in a economically disadvantaged community. We trained the women there on tailoring skills and together we manufactured eco-friendly cloth bags. 

Many children started coming to our center to visit their mothers. My daughter was 6 year old, she was also with us all the time. We realized that a child of similar age didn't have the exposure & education as my daughter. We wanted to bridge the gap at our personal capacity. We started an evening activity center for my child and our tailors (10 children in total) .

Today, we are a team of 15+ professionals working with 250+ children from around the community. With a  proven curriculum to improve their skills & confidence.

A child's development largely depends on the circumstances in which he/she grows up. In low earning communities, alcoholic father, weak mother, child-unfriendly neighbors and zero space to play is an unfortunate norm.

Children growing up in such communities lack their ability to express, very low academic & life skills. Over years of interacting with multiple stakeholders within the community, we feel three things every child needs:

1. Role models to get inspired from.

2. Opportunities to hone their skills.

3. Friendly spaces where they can be themselves.

We primarily engage with children in multiple activity centers near their home (temple, a volunteers house, a public space, rented common place) and conduct these activities. 

1. Introduce people from different career streams. Through our one-one mapping and mentoring programs, children can be friends with adults in a safe and friendly environment.

2. Introduce various skills. We invite experts from field like arts, music, martial arts to get the child develop skills on any of these. Children showing special skills are then aligned to masters in those trades and given an opportunity to enhance their skills.

3. Spaces for children.  We make these spaces ventilated, safe and allow only adults who respects children.

Unlike many institutionalized educational efforts, we are well knit within the social fabric. We work with their parents, we know with the commune, we work with their school and then we work with children independently. This gives us access to all key touch points which impacts a child's development.

Parents: We create livelihood by employing them in our tailoring centers

Community: We resolve commune's issues by liaison with Government officials

School: We extend our lifeskill program to children inside the school (Mostly poorly funded schools)

Children are the future. 

A child's world is developed by the community & not just the parents. 

We are talking about keeping better people around children. The effectiveness of this program is in the moral and ethics of the people who interact with children. Our effort is in filtering such professionals and presenting them to children. We do an orientation & evaluation personally with every mentor, educator, individual the child gets to meet at the center.

If we are successful, we not just make a good next generation children for the community. We will also be inspiring a good set of professionals who would want to get their feets dirty as we do.

Professionals with passion for a better world can work as members of vulnerable communities. Such communities are welcoming change makers. 

People for People.