Trust Community Livelihoods

Trust Community Livelihoods (TCL) promotes agriculture-based rural livelihoods in Bahraich and Shrawasti districts, Uttar Pradesh. The programme aims to enhance incomes for marginalized rural households by intensifying agriculture, diversifying crops, and adopting scientific practices. TCL focuses on strengthening agriculture value chains through community institutions, including input supply, output aggregation, storage, marketing, and pulse crop processing. The initiative has instilled confidence in the community to adopt and expand programme activities. TCL emphasizes high-value crops like banana, onion, chilli, and riverbed farming of cucurbits, while also promoting water economization through land development, micro-irrigation, and solar irrigation systems.

Bahraich and Shrawasti experience significant migration due to limited earning opportunities, mainly reliant on sporadic agricultural labour. Trust Community Livelihoods (TCL) addresses this issue through its programme for rural migrants in four blocks of these districts. TCL operates migration resource centres called "Apna Sewa Kendras" (ASK) providing financial and social inclusion services. ASKs, set up in remote locations, cover about ten Gram Panchayats each, reaching over 30,000 migrant households in under three years. Tata Trusts support this initiative.

Trust Community Livelihoods (TCL) implements the School Learning and Improvement Programme (SLIP) in 50 Government Primary Schools in Risia and Kaiserganj Blocks of Bahraich. The programme aims to ensure quality education and child-friendly schools. TCL collaborates with existing teachers, using creative methods, teaching aids, games, and child-centric poems and stories to enhance children's learning levels. Libraries are established in all schools, serving as valuable learning centres. TCL also works with School Management Committees (SMC) to raise awareness about their monitoring roles, while identifying and enrolling out-of-school children.

TCL initiated the Internet Saathi Programme to empower young rural women with digital literacy. This project was implemented in 5 blocks of Bahraich, training 100 women as Internet Saathis. These Saathis further educated 67,000 rural women on using smartphones and the internet. TCL also supports the Saathis in becoming entrepreneurs by providing training in various businesses like Printing, Photocopy shops, Stitching, Beauty Parlors, and more.

TCL focuses on promoting key community institutions, including women-based three-tiered structures of SHG, Village Organisation, and Federation. These institutions engage in collective economic activities such as shade net nursery, vermicompost, trading in lentil and maize, modern farm machinery rentals, Dal Mill pulse processing, and the supply of quality agricultural inputs. TCL collaborates with UP State Rural Livelihoods Mission, taking over and supporting groups formed by both organizations to promote agriculture-based livelihoods.