六合开奖记录

Cities tend to forget the very people who are their lifeline.

The 12.5 million denizens of Bengaluru, known as India’s Silicon Valley, generate 5,757 metric tonnes of solid waste per day.

But the city’s estimated 30,000 informal waste pickers, who form the backbone of Bengaluru’s waste management system, are invisible and ignored. They live in deplorable conditions with low and unstable incomes, face significant workplace hazards, and are treated with suspicion and contempt.

Funded by the H&M Foundation, Saamuhika Shakti (SaaS, the Collective Impact Initiative), aims to address this situation. 六合开奖记录 Media Action, an initiative programme partner, turned to social media to create our Pathway to Respect, Identity, Dignity and Empowerment (PRIDE) project for informal waste pickers.

Lack of recognition

The PRIDE project’s formative research revealed that there is a lack of recognition of the humans behind the process of waste management. While people in the city see waste on the streets, and they are concerned about it, they failed to list waste pickers as important to their lives. On further probing, we found that while people appreciated the work of formal waste collectors, who are hired by the municipality for door-to-door garbage collection, informal waste pickers were still stigmatised. More than half of our study respondents said that informal waste pickers are dirty and shouldn’t be allowed inside residential building complexes.

Street rag-pickers look scary, so we don't go near them!

- Female, 39, housewife, Bengaluru

The pandemic strengthened these negative perceptions. Waste pickers, in turn, confirmed having to regularly deal with discrimination.

’They (the public) scold us. They feel they will catch the disease (COVID-19) from us. They think we have the virus. So, I do not like to go to work.’’

- Female waste picker, under 18

Research was used to identify segments within social media users among the general population of Bengaluru, based on their attitudes towards informal waste pickers. Our research and analysis showed three broad segments of people:

• Appreciators, who valued the role and contributions of informal waste pickers and understood their circumstances 
• Sympathisers, who displayed an overall sentimentality towards informal waste pickers accompanied by stereotyping of their work
• Stigmatisers, who wanted to distance themselves from the waste picking community and displayed extremely negative attitudes

The project decided to focus on appreciators and sympathisers, who were more likely to become early adopters of any changes in attitude or behaviour.

Strategic reframing

In a country with a history of caste-based occupations and discrimination, bringing a change in mindsets is uphill work. The project turned to Professor Judith Butler to understand why some lives are valued and others not, and how marginalisation is contingent on rendering social groups virtually invisible.

Based on the reading of Butler and formative research, the project’s Theory of Change focused on the need to end the invisibility of informal waste pickers if their lives and work were to be properly valued. This involved a reframing of the work of waste pickers as involving special skills and productive labour essential for the city’s survival, as well as recognition of the fragility of social media users’ own lives in the face of environmental hazards. The recognition of this shared fragility is a pathway to creating a social bond that obliges us to care for each other. Establishing the interconnectedness between the lives of social media users and the work of waste pickers was integral to the former valuing the life and work of the latter.

Designing for PRIDE

The project used social media to connect the people of Bengaluru with informal waste pickers, by positioning the waste pickers as ’invaluable friends’, friends they did not know they had. The creative strategy was designed to lift the shroud of invisibility and open the eyes of Bengalureans to the value that informal waste pickers bring to their lives - as professionals, as humans, and as residents living side-by-side in the same city.

A explored the concept of friendship and revealed how informal waste pickers share the values normally associated with true friendships. The social experiment was conducted by Radhika Narayan, a popular actor and social media influencer. The film ended with a call to action to join a moderated private community on Facebook called the #Invaluables Facebook group.

The content posted on this group brought Bengalureans closer to the waste picking community, by creating awareness and demonstrating the value of their work to save the city from being buried under a mountain of garbage, and therefore demonstrating their interconnectedness.

Crafting this journey of perception change required a steady stream of relevant content through the week, seizing every opportunity and fact in a strategic manner and converting it into engaging content that would bring this interconnectedness to life. We built the social media strategy carefully, weaving in the use of influencers wherever necessary and taking the conversations beyond social media to discussions on FM radio during regular shows, hosted by prominent city RJs.

The branding, Invaluables, was designed to strengthen the idea of ‘interconnectedness’. The brand identity uses image, colour and text to combine three graphic ideas – the joining of two hands, the use of two eco-friendly colours - blue and green - and the skyline symbolising the city of Bengaluru.

Analysis and impact

Social media statistics show that the first phase of the #Invaluables content reached at least 2.6 million unique people, 21% of the city’s population, with a total of 4.4 million video views and 509,429 engagements (e.g. likes, comments).

The first round of impact evaluation also shows that we have started to shift people’s understanding of waste pickers. There was an improvement in spontaneous awareness of different segments of informal waste pickers, from 10% at baseline to 16% among those exposed to the #Invaluables content. There was no such change within the control group. Analysis also shows greater discussion about informal waste pickers, their work and place in society among those exposed (60%) to the content, compared to those not exposed (49%).

We have demonstrated that an evidence-based, insight-driven, carefully crafted social media campaign can help shift negative perceptions attached to certain occupations and help reduce inequalities. With significant positive shifts in awareness and discussions about informal waste pickers after the first phase of the campaign, we are now confident in taking forward the idea of Invaluables to the next phase of building understanding and appreciation for the critical importance of their work.

Our next phase will demonstrate the connection between the people of Bengaluru and the city’s waste pickers - and why everyone should be aware of and celebrate a Happy Number.

Check out the Happy Number to learn more.

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Varinder Kaur Gambhir is director of research, Soma Katiyar is executive creative director and Ragini Pasricha is director of content strategy at 六合开奖记录 Media Action India.

Learn more about our Invaluables project here: /mediaaction/where-we-work/asia/india/invaluables/

Read our press release about the Happy Number here: /mediaaction/where-we-work/asia/india/happy-number-invaluables/

The Invaluables project is part of the Saamuhika Shakti (collective impact) initiative, funded by the H&M Foundation.