Annual Report 2019-20

Dear Friends,

These are strange times to be sharing our Annual Report. Despite the challenges that COVID has pushed us to reckon with, we did not want to lose sight of the efforts by the communities that Azad works with and what its team put in over the last year. As we try to make our way into this very unfamiliar, difficult future, we still need to keep the best of the past with us, for that will also pave the way to “build back better” hopefully. So, here it is, our Annual Report for 2019-20, this time only an e-version, to save costs and minimize any possibility of spread of infection.

As you will see, the year 2019-20 was also a typically full year, complete with its highs, lows, difficulties, and achievements. We decided to tell the story this year by sharing stories and voices of those people we normally don’t highlight. These are the people who make things happen, who put in long and arduous hours, who work with passion and commitment, and without whom there would be no organizations or institutions—“the Team.” At Azad, we have always believed that development or social change is not just about what we do or what we make happen out there, but it is as much about what happens to us—the doers, makers, or facilitators of this social change. Since social change is mostly about disrupting existing power structures that manifest in unequal social relations, it is equally important to continually reflect upon the relationships that we, the changemakers, establish amongst ourselves and with the communities. An important part of this is to view this relationship with communities as a two-way process, where we each learn.

We bring to you the work of Azad through the lives and experiences of some of our team members as they share what they have learned in their work with women and men over the years. So we hear Rama from Delhi talk about how she has grown over her eight years with Azad, Akash from Jaipur discuss how he has started taking responsibility for unpaid care work at home, and Shampa from Kolkata, formerly a trainee and now a driving faculty, express her aspirations to excel in her work. You will see the faces of all our team members in the pages to follow. This Annual Report is dedicated to them all, to express our gratitude for enabling us all to learn and work together, for bringing in their energies and hopes, their aspirations for a better world, their fears and concerns, and putting all of it into the pot called Azad Foundation, letting it simmer, sometimes boil, but finally helping cook the diverse programs about which you will read inside.

Since the Annual Report is about ‘the people behind,’ we also bring you the voices of those who support this team. We have Sarah from AJWS sharing her experience of supporting Azad and Susmitha, who has supported Azad’s work on individual fundraising for many years, sharing what it has meant to her. Individual donations comprised 5% of our overall turnover this year, and we are grateful to all those individuals who have continued to have faith in our work and stood by us. We are thankful to all the institutional donors (foundations and corporates) and the specific individuals in each of these who have been our co-travelers.

I cannot end this without mentioning the pandemic. We know it is going to demand the best from us. As per the World Bank (statement in HT, 9th June 2020), “The coronavirus pandemic will plunge the world into a severe recession, the deepest since WWII, shredding per capita incomes and pushing millions into poverty…. In India, the GDP will shrink 3.2% in the fiscal year 2020-21.” That is not all; Debraj Ray (Professor at New York University) and S. Subramanium (a retired professor from Madras Institute of Development Studies and a former member of the advisory board of the World Bank’s Commission on Global Poverty) have stated (in their working paper titled Interim Report on India’s Lockdown), “In India, a ‘developing country with great sectoral and occupational vulnerabilities, this dramatic reduction (in economy) is more than economic; it means lives lost… Lives lost through violence, starvation, indebtedness, and extreme stress are invisible, in the sense that they will diffuse through category and time.”

These are dire predictions, and we believe that civil society has always rallied itself at times of crisis—whether these are natural, human, or medical disasters. Azad’s work will have greater relevance as we rebuild livelihoods, specifically in urban spaces. Livelihoods for urban resource-poor women while addressing gender-based inequalities at home and outside will have to be among the more effective strategies for “building back better.” But the task is daunting, and we will need to pull together across institutions and sectors to build collaborations that can reach the last person.

In Hope and in Solidarity,
Meenu Vadera

Read the 2019-20 Azad Foundation Annual Report