Human Resource & Administrative Support for Population First

Population First has continued to adapt to the changes the pandemic has presented. However, while our offices have moved into our homes for the majority of us, that is not the case for all, such as our Administrative & Accounts team, or our Field team, who visit field areas, especially those which are not project-based, to ensure that our beneficiaries are supported. Additionally, organizations such as ours have to continue to pay for upkeep of their offices and establishments.

A strong administrative support, financial and human resources are the foundation for any good organization and these expenses are borne by the organization’s savings and corpus funds. Population First for years participated in fundraising campaigns like Mumbai Marathon, hosted its own fundraiser 'Legends for Laadli' that got us sponsorships that shored up our funds and helped us run our organization.

Unfortunately, with the current pandemic situation, we were unable to host fundraisers or make use of largescale fundraising opportunities like Mumbai Marathon. Increasingly CSR funding is not allocating more than 5-6% towards administrative and institutional charges — which does not even meet our basic administrative expenses.

Since April 2020, despite stalled projects, we continued to support our beneficiaries, retained the staff (head office and field team) and paid salaries from our corpus thus depleting our reserves.

We need a strong team at the head office for resource mobilization, and programme management to support the field staff and advocacy initiatives. Therefore, the need to raise money for administrative and personnel costs continues.

In February, last year, we were able to raise approximately, Rs. 1,99,000/- worth donations for supporting our organization. Through those donations we were able to

• support our field team in continuing their work with our in-house livelihood and nutrition project – poultry farming in tribal villages.
• help Administrative and Accounts team in taking care of administrative expenses in running our offices smoothly.
• absorb additional costs that we incurred during implementation of on-field nutrition and livelihood projects and also supported our projects till the time reimbursements from the CSR partners were received.

Despite the goodwill and support, there is still a long way to go in ensuring a safety net for our organization. Therefore, this year, we wish to raise close to Rs. 15,00,000/- through your support!

This support will enable us to support above mentioned expenses as well as following additional objectives:

• continue supporting our in-house poultry farming intervention for tribal villages, further streamlining the project and expanding it in many more hamlets
• contribute in retaining the human resource and create an opportunity for vacant posts to be filled at our organization
• strengthen Panchayati level Institutions and especially build capacities of women and youth in order to actively participate in their communities’ development
• intensively engage with the women and the children thus, bringing about a holistic change in their health, especially haemoglobin levels restart our urban youth-based intervention and innovative campaigns so that the issues of gender sensitivity and equality continue to inform the attitudes of our future generations

At Population First, we invest in change makers and change leaders from the grassroots level to our head office in Thane who want to better their communities.

If supported, our team can bring about transformative change through our project activities.

1. Come up with interventions that focus on holistically improving the health of women, adolescent girls and boys, especially those who were left behind due to the pandemic
2. Support our rural businesswomen in expanding their market reach through technological inputs
3. Bring about greater transparency and accountability in government programmes through micro-planning and community participation at Gram Panchayat level
4. Raise sufficient funds for the organization through a dedicated team for fund raising and resource mobilization to engage in advocacy for gender equality
5. Innovate and also expand our successful strategies to create more impact, thus empowering youth, women and community leaders to be the change agents.