Crowdsourcing, Crowd Economy and Crowd Funding 2017

Initiative: Karvaan: A Roving Book Project
Organization: Karvaan: A Roving Book Project
Facebook: @karvaanbookproject
Twitter: @karvaanproject
Website: www.karvaanbookproject.wordpress.com

Driving around the culture of reading

Karvaan: A Roving Book Project is an initiative to create libraries in schools and celebrate multilingualism in the valley of Kashmir, and promote the culture of public libraries and book reading to create interactive spaces for young minds of the state.

A self-funded project, Karvaan has utilised social media channels to encourage and inspire individuals, groups and organisations all over the country — and even abroad — to donate new and old books in English, Urdu and Kashmiri for the children of Kashmir. Through shout-outs on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, besides word-of-mouth, people from different parts of the country can courier their books to Srinagar in Jammu & Kashmir; or those in New Delhi can even drop them off at one of the collection points in the city.

Starting May 2017, the Karvaan: A Roving Book Project van will be on the road for a period of one to two months, visiting various schools in different parts of rural Kashmir to help them build libraries for children and encourage them to pick up a book and read. While on the road, the project also aims to share with its contributors stories from the schools and villages that are visited and helped in creating libraries.

Karvaan: A Roving Book Project has been recognised as a Winner for the year 2017 in the category Crowdsourcing, Crowd Economy and Crowd Funding for creating crowdfunded libraries in schools

Initiative: MyCityMyBudget
Organization: Janaagraha Centre For Citizenship and Democracy
Facebook: @ichangemycity
Twitter: @ichangemycity
Website: www.ichangemycity.com/mycitymybudget

Taking the ownership

Janaagraha was officially launched in Bengaluru (Karnataka) in December 2001 as an independent movement to encourage citizen participation in urban governance with its first campaign – Ward Works — for participatory budgeting inspired by Porto Alegre People’s Budget. Today, Janaagraha operates multiple programmes under three thematic areas: Civic Learning, Citizen Participation, and Advocacy & Reforms.

Over the last decade and a half, Janaagraha’s mission has been to transform the quality of life in urban India. It sees “quality of life” as comprising two distinct but interrelated aspects – “Quality of Infrastructure and Services” and “Quality of Citizenship”. At present, the MyCityMyBudget programme seeks to fulfill these critical needs in Bengaluru and create a replicable model that can be adopted by cities across the country.

MyCityMyBudget primarily focuses on catalysing civic participation in budgets for all citizens in a city to have access to a basic minimum quality of life; creating structured platforms for civic participation at a neighbourhood level to facilitate active citizenship; and building and strengthening systematic channels of communication and trust between communities and governments (both elected and administrative) for efficient flow of information and services.

MyCityMyBudget has been recognised as a Winner for the year 2017 in the category Crowdsourcing, Crowd Economy and Crowd Funding for promoting citizen participation in urban governance.

Initiative: The Dream Of A Poor To Educate Himself
Organization: Yuva vikas Samiti
Facebook: @yvsindia
Twitter:  @Yuvavikasngo
Website: www.yvsindia.ngo

Crowdfunding opens a roadblock in education

The Dream of a Poor to Educate Himself is a social media campaign started by Brihaspati Kumar Pandey, the Secretary of Yuva Vikas Samiti, a local non-government organisation based in Uttar Pradesh.

The crowdfunding campaign was started for Ajay Kumar, an 18-year-old boy from Sahpur Village, who wanted to pursue engineering but could not afford the fee. Kumar had passed as many as six entrance examinations of engineering. . Determined to pursue his dreams, Kumar approached two government banks for an education loan but was denied by both because of his family’s poor financial status. A retired colonel and local social worker KC Mishra heard Kumar’s story and approached Pandey for help.

Brihaspati Kumar Pandey, who had attended a few workshops on the use of social media for NGOs, decided to use those skills and raise fund online for Kumar’s education. He reached out to his online networks on various social media platforms — Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and WhatsApp — to share Kumar’s story and seek funds. In less than three days, the campaign was able to raise Rs. 3 lakh. Today, Kumar is pursuing engineering at the Buddha Institute of Technology in Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh.

Corwdfunding the Dream of a Poor to Educate Himself has received a Special Mention for the year 2017 in the category Crowdsourcing, Crowd Economy and Crowd Funding for successfully raising funds for a young man’s education.