Adgully Exclusive | Marketing the social cause: Oxfam's Nisha Agarwal
Oxfam is an organization that works in the area of fighting poverty and injustice by merging "grassroots programming (through partner NGOs) to local, national and global advocacy and policy-making'.
Oxfam India also works along the broad framework of the Oxfam organization world over and works to achieve positive changes in four areas- essential services, gender justice, economic justice and humanitarian response.
Oxfam India has its presence in six cities across the country, with a staff of about 120. Oxfam India has nine different programmes pertaining to areas of natural resources, livelihood, right to healthcare, right to educations, right to employment, right to food, domestic violence, empowerment of women and disaster relief work. Adgully caught up with Nisha Agrawal, CEO, Oxfam India, to find out the humanitarian organizations positive presence and its achievements in terms of getting the policy makers decisions.
Prior to Oxfam India being established in the year 2008, Agrawal was travelling and living abroad for 30 years and she returned to India to head the organization.
Talking about Oxfam's broad work area, Agrawal says, "Oxfam works on developmental issues. We try and work with poor people to empower them and inform them about their rights. We try to help them demand their rights from the Government."
Agrawal believes that a key highpoint in her leading the organization has been the recent initiative where artists came together to get donors buy their artwork for as little as an amount as they the donors were willing to pay. The total amount collected from this initiative a close to Rs.25 lakhs was forwarded to aid Leh thunderstorm and Pakistani flood victims. "We have been able to mobilise funds from Indian professionals and masses and channel them to Kosi relief project, South India flood relief etc. So Oxfam plays a very important role in humanitarian work. We are able to respond very quickly and very effectively to get in there within like two days after a disaster has hit a place," she adds.
The organization has also tried to create awareness about climatic changes amongst the poor and domestic violence. Agrawal says, "We look at informing women about the new domestic violence laws and looking at why it is not getting implemented. So educating the women to protect themselves when subjected to violence."
Moreover she feels that in India specifically there a lot of good programmes in place but which have not been implemented adequately. "So we work with the most marginalized people across the country. We try and see how a specific benefit or a governmental programme can actually reach each and everybody," Agrawal adds.
The organization also funds NGOs on the ground and so far has provided funding to over 200 local NGOs. "We use the quality experience of what is exactly happening on the ground to feed it back to policy making. So that then you have a change at a India level. It's quite a big ambition and then as we have a presence across the globe we try at creating a change at the global level,"Agrawal opines.
So how have policy makers responded to Oxfam's study and inputs?
Agrawal says that the response has been very good. "What we do is on any given issue we bring the people on the ground and the policy makers and put them together in the same room, so that everybody can really see what a fact on the ground is," she adds.
Talking about the marketing initiatives for Oxfam India, Agrawal points out that, "We try and raise funds from individual people because we want them to know about our work and to support it. So that these 200 million rich middle class Indians also start caring about poverty and injustice. So we hire a lot of people who go and knock on people's door and try and explain them what we do and then we try and align them to our causes and also raise funds from them."
Oxfam has been a well-known name across some of the countries and there is huge brand recognition. However for Oxfam India it is still too early to have established the same brand value. "We are two years old. So hopefully in those two years' time more people know about us but hopefully what they know is that we do high quality work. We don't want people to just know our name but we want them to know that we do good work and that we are very transparent and accountable organization," Agrawal adds.
Agrawal says, "We really want to position ourselves as a world class organization like we are in the other countries across the globe."
Actor Rahul Bose is the ambassador for Oxfam across the globe. Talking about celebrity association with an NGO, Agrawal says, "For us because we are so new here and because we need to create a name, it is very important for us in India especially to be associated with celebrities who can talk about our work, talk about our organization. If a celebrity comes along for a cause it attracts different kind of publicity. But it is also very important that the brand ambassador is the right choice. Besides for us somebody like Rahul Bose adds a lot of value."
Oxfam is about a Rs.100 crore organization.
As a message for youngsters, Agrawal says, "We are trying to develop a programme for the youth, which is called "Youth Unactive Citizenship'. We believe that a lot of the problems of India today are because people don't care about other people. We want the next generation's heart to break when they see someone suffering and act upon it. So we are really trying to reach to young people specially and trying to tell them that they need to play a role now and nobody else can help India change. We believe that change will come from young people and they are very very important for us." | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]
Share
Facebook
YouTube
Tweet
Twitter
LinkedIn