Urban Homeless

To ensure their engagement on issues of homelessness, destitution and people’s right to the city and to establish an Urban State Resource Centre by gathering, collating, sharing and disseminating information on homelessness and related issues.

Where: In 2 of the largest cities in Jharkhand: Ranchi and Dhanbad with the highest homeless population in Jharkhand in 2011.

How:
-Capacity building of the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and shelter implementing agencies on homelessness and shelter homes
-Policy Advocacy

In our cities, every day thousands of people sleep under the open sky without a roof. In an attempt to resolve the issue of homelessness in urban settings, the work started in 2014.
Ekjut brought this issue to the public domain in Jharkhand by supporting the government to accommodate them in shelters while assuring basic services and welfare schemes. Two headcount surveys were done in Ranchi (2016) and Dhanbad (2017) of people sleeping on pavements and this was found to be ~ 8000. By sharing homeless people’s experiences in the media, Civil Society Organization platforms and with state authorities, a plan for the state agenda was developed.

This initiative has improved the condition and functionality of shelters for the homeless, increased number of shelter homes, improved management processes, better infrastructure, improved amenities for shelters and raised awareness among the homeless population.

Interventions

1: Homelessness
Our team visited the streets to contact homeless people who were in distress and vulnerable and provided them with aid in the form of shelter, health care and food. During winter months, street contact programs were organized to support them additionally with the distribution of blankets, warm clothes, food and water.

2: Training & Capacity Building
The belief of the team has been to learn and evolve from the challenges on the ground with the commitment to share knowledge with relevant stakeholders, duty bearers, community and alliances.
As a technical agency in implementing the shelter program in Jharkhand training and orientation programs were organized with shelter managing agencies and Urban Local Bodies along with engagement with volunteers and interns who are passionate to bring social change.

3: Education
Our work with street-connected children, children in hazardous work and their parents in different slums involved improving their knowledge of child rights and providing care. Activities with children included art, basic education, games and fun learning to provide them space within the community for mainstreaming.

4: Covid Response
The pandemic left many people with dire poverty and homeless person were more impacted. Cooked meals, monthly dry rations, and hygienic kits for shelter homes, frontline workers and community members were activities during the lockdown.  Assistance in the form of free travel and food was provided to migrants and daily wage workers in the city who lost their livelihood with no means to return to their homes.