Angel Xpress Foundation - Submission, UNSDG challenge 2021

1.    Tell us about yourself and why you are applying to the WE Empower UN SDG Challenge.

I am an ex financial services professional with over 20 years of experience in building businesses from scratch. I have played regional and national roles in large corporations. In 2011, I decided to take a year off. I was losing interest in the work I was doing and wanted to explore different avenues that brought me more satisfaction. During that period, a volunteering stint brought me face to face with the reality of the poor quality of education being imparted to underprivileged children, giving them scant opportunities to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty and this deeply disturbed me.

 Meeting Beena Advani at a charity event crystallized an idea I had of utilizing available resources in society to bridge the gap between different economic classes and reducing inequality while empowering students with the ability and means to learn.

 We quit our respective professional pursuits to launch Angel Xpress Foundation (AXF), an NGO that promotes and enables volunteerism to lend a hand to the large groups of people who are falling behind and unable to participate in the country’s robust growth.

 I seek a global audience through this platform to build visibility and prestige for this unique disruptive model.

 2.    Please provide an overview of your business/organization's mission and how it supports the SDGs.

AXF believes that an involved and educated adult can lead a child to discovering their own true potential and every child deserves that opportunity. At our strategically located Free Learning Centres operated from public spaces like parks, empathetic and educated adults living in high-rises reach out to first-generation learners from neighbouring slums.

Stay-at-home mothers, active retirees, freelance professionals and students from affluent institutions – our mission is to equip every empathetic citizen with a volunteering opportunity so that they can act as tutors, mentors and guides.

We want to impact society positively by infusing a love for learning in our students, coupled with a desire to excel and use the best of their abilities. 

Volunteer groups receive resources and extensive training from AXF so that they can lead their own neighborhood program independently.

We have grown from a social experiment with 2 volunteers and 18 children in 2012 to 700 volunteers teaching 2200 children daily in an afterschool program covering English, Math & Life skills in public locations like parks and promenades.

Through the pandemic, we have engaged with our students through online classes and have ensured that their families were supported through regular distribution of ration and  essential items.

3.    How does your business support the first SDG selected? Please provide concrete examples and data that demonstrate your success and impact.

Education, one of the biggest drivers for equality, was made a fundamental right in  2009. But this act which aimed to benefit the weakest and most marginalized sections of our society has been mostly ineffective across the country. In Mumbai, enrolment in Municipal schools fell by 23% between 2013-18 while the spend grew by 36%. 

This lack of access to quality education has kept the underprivileged Indian masses illiterate and unaware, unable to secure gainful employment or future prospects that afford them any security or opportunities for growth. AXF  has successfully implemented an idea that uses the coexistence of slums and high-rises to bridge the social divide, in Mumbai, India which is home to over 24 million people, of which 41.3% live in slums.

Our Free Learning Center Program, recruits and trains socially conscious educated citizens from affluent backgrounds, largely homemakers and active retirees to set up a community service program in their neighborhood where children from neighbouring slums are tutored & mentored by educated volunteers until they are gainfully employed.

Citizen groups implementing the program locally receive curricular as well as extensive training and guidance among other resources, from the AXF Program team.

 4.    How does your business support the second SDG selected? Please provide concrete examples and data that demonstrate your success and impact.

 Gender discrimination is deeply embedded in the Indian society and hence we aim to empower and create awareness in multiple ways.

 We have included dealing with gender discrimination and practicing gender equality as a part of our life skills curriculum to ensure that our educational content tutors children from an early age to cultivate a mindset that  is conscious of the significance of equal rights.

 We work extensively with our students’ parents. Among other topics on parenting that form a part of our PTA discussions, counselling for equal rights and opportunities for the girl child holds primary importance.

 A subtle form of gender discrimination is the expectation of the woman becoming a stay at home mother who, after the children become self-reliant, find themselves losing relevance. Many such women, while disinclined to go back to full-time work, are keen to use their time in meaningful pursuit. AXF provides such women with an opportunity to grow, learn and use their capacity to work for a cause that not only appeals to them and helps them become productive members of society but also helps them earn respect, relevance and acknowledgement as well as to find meaning and purpose in life.

 5.    How does your business support the third SDG selected? Please provide concrete examples and data that demonstrate your success and impact.

Through our unique model of citizen participation for social good, AXF has managed to find a way to by-pass the lack of access to opportunities to learn and thus attain tools for achieving sustainable livelihood for the underprivileged.

The scope of Individual social responsibility has been ignored in India, especially given there is a substantial underutilized quality human resource in the form of educated housewives and the active retired.

Through our free learning centre format, we have managed to interlink communities otherwise living in their own cocoons through an empathetic platform, thus creating a bridge between different economic classes.

AXF enables citizens to easily adopt volunteerism and community service as a lifestyle choice, thereby providing them with an opportunity to nurture underserved children by building in them an interest and capacity to learn. A daily snack, fun and educational outings, redistribution drives for essential items like clothes, shoes, toys, workshops on important topics like health, hygiene, sexual safety, sports participation, cultural events and medical dental camps further help bridge the divide.

A youth engagement program has also been introduced for academic, vocational counselling and skill-based training through various collaborations to support children through college, until they achieve employment.

6.    Does your business support any more SDGs? Please explain. (optional)

India as a country has been moving towards excessively capitalistic policies and has gradually moved away from a socialistic mindset. We are not doing enough to alleviate the condition of our poor, as evidenced by our rank of 129 out of 158 countries in total for government effort in reducing inequality. 

 At AXF we mine underutilized and freely available resources in society to bring them to play for the benefit of the underprivileged section of society in order to ultimately end poverty, which is our primary goal.

 Models that need increasing inputs of money to grow can only have finite possibilities. We have tapped into a quality source which can grow without an increasing infusion of capital. After experimentation, once we arrived at a format that worked, we decided to franchise it, for free, to citizen groups interested in the idea, in an attempt to create a social movement.

 Our model is not just focused on ensuring that our students are gainfully employed but also on developing 21st century skills, thus ensuring that our students grow up to be well rounded and empowered individuals as well as both resourceful and good citizens, capable of critical thinking and responsible decision making.

 7.    Explain your vision of how your business will help create the future according to the SDG 2030 Agenda

We recognize that underprivileged children have limited opportunity to break free from the cycle of poverty. Inadequate socio-political structures push marginalized communities further down the social order, creating a critical need for intervention.

In Mumbai, urban migration has placed the educated affluent in close proximity with the urban poor as high rise complexes are often juxtaposed with sprawling slums. Our community based free learning centers use this unique co-existence to bridge the socio-economic divide.

Our mission is to create a society that is inclusive, equal and fair. We aim to assimilate communities living on the fringes of society into mainstream society, via a collaborative process in which the educated affluent are trained to play the role of educators, mentors and guides to their less privileged counterparts living within the same geographies.

We commenced our journey in 2012 with one center and 18 children and now have a combined strength of 20 free learning centers, with over 2,200 children registered offline (1,400 attending online during the pandemic period taught by 1,000 volunteers). Recently, AXF also introduced tutoring as per high school curriculum for students in grades 9 to 12 and a Youth Engagement Program (YEP) to build career awareness and soft-skills.

8.    Has your business model been replicated in other countries? If not, do you have a vision for expansion? Please describe.

Our operations are currently limited to Mumbai which has a population of over 9 million living in slums. While we are happy to continue to focus on this city, we wish to share our model and impact with the world should more countries wish to learn from our experience or wish to utilize our resources or expertise. This is the primary reason for our participation in the UNSDG program.

9.    What recommendations would you make to UN Officials and Ministers/Legislators to better support/remove barriers for women entrepreneurs?

In formal education, we reward good behaviour in children. Similarly, by ensuring benefits for countries taking the right step towards an inclusive society, free of barriers for participation of women in social, political and business lives, we can foster this desirable behaviour. Special benefits could be given to such countries that would translate to economic gain.

Governments can be lauded for legislations supporting women through tax concessions and special benefits for families educating the girl child, allowing their women to work and limiting family size to two children per couple.

Governments can also pass legislations rewarding organisations that provide equal opportunity, equal pay and early childcare facility, through meaningful tax concessions.

Countries with a high level of female participation in political and business avenues can be invited to participate in some special forums that would also lead to economic benefit.

Developed countries supporting equal opportunities can choose to reward businesses who partner with countries on the approved list for fostering equality for women.

10. Please describe how your business promotes and sustains the right to safety for women and girls. This could be through the workplace, within your advertising, within your supply chain, within the community or in the homes of your workforce.

Our educational content and teaching philosophies foster an inclusive and empathetic mindset with the aim of making this world fair and harmonious.

Life-skills education plays a vital role in creating awareness, building the ability to articulate issues, taking responsibility for actions and being proactive. Through our interactions, we provide guidance and direction to adolescents, empowering them with improved decision-making skills and abilities that promote mental well being and competencies to face the realities of life.

The AXF Life Skills curriculum is designed to equip its students with WHO prescribed skills like critical and collaborative thinking, communication, flexibility, empathy, mindfulness, self-esteem etc through stories and activities. The list has been extended to include gender sensitivity with the purpose of creating an inclusive mindset in our student body.

Our Social and Emotional Learning workshops help students better manage their relationships with adults and peers and have a tangible positive benefit on students' emotional well-being.

Besides working with students to foster a fair and inclusive mindset, we also work with the larger community through regular parent-teacher meetings, which we use to counsel and sensitize parents to our ideologies and philosophies with the belief that they can percolate deeper into the community.

11. Describe how you help foster gender equality and support more women into leadership roles in your business/organization and/or the broader community.

We foster gender equality in the student community from slums, especially the youth through our content and teachings. We work with their parents through workshops and counselling sessions and encourage them to give equal opportunities to their daughters.

Our volunteers, many of whom are educated, accomplished women, act as role models for our students who learn to see possibilities for women as active participants in economic and developmental activities, beyond their traditional roles as homemakers.

Our enterprise is focused on empowering educated homemakers (60% of India's urban mothers choose to give up full-time careers after motherhood) to take up leadership roles in their communities and to run a community service program under Angel Xpress' umbrella in their neighbourhood, by investing just 2 to 3 hours from their day. Our teaching volunteers also need to give only 2 to 3 hours a week, in a learning centre that is walking distance from their homes, thus making the choice to volunteer easy even for homemakers, whose primary responsibility continue to be their homes and children. Being connected to like-minded people helps create communities with a positive vibe and intent in both sections of society.

12. How did COVID-19 affect your business/organization? How have you adapted to the challenges and opportunities of the global health crisis?

We embarked on a massive COVID-19 relief initiative from March 2020. Our students were from families dependent on daily wages or small businesses. Faced with deprivation due to the shutdown, they did not have access to basic essentials.

Our volunteers rapidly responded to this crisis by raising funds to arrange for provisions and other essentials for the families of our students. Through their concerted and determined efforts, we were able to assist over 1,400 AXF families with regular ration kits and provided cash assistance. Another 1,200 non AXF families in distress were also provided ration relief. This effort is a testimony to the empathy and dedication of our volunteers, our core strength.

Due to the restrictions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic, our free learning centres were shut down and physical classes in our public gardens were discontinued. We adapted to this change by introducing online classes for our students using a range of technological platforms. Through the efforts of our volunteers and well-wishers, we were able to assist students with mobile phones and provide them with internet data packs. Around 1,400 students continued their education with us online, assisted by 1,000 plus volunteers to make this transition feasible.

13. Did your business or organization provide any essential and/or innovative products or services that helped your community during this crisis?

We have engaged in regular distribution of ration relief/nutrition kits and direct cash transfers during emergencies for more than 1400 of our students’ families. We have also assisted deserving students with Internet data recharge packs, purchased devices to support them and organized a scholarship drive to cover college and coaching fee of 30 students who had done well academically and showed promise of pursuing professional careers. In total, we have spent nearly 180000 USD equivalent of INR on relief activities in the last year.