Every youth aspire for a better future and this aspiration moves them to look for opportunities to achieve this dream. In villages, where the scope of livelihood is narrow, the youth start looking towards cities to fulfil their dreams. Often these dreams have a grey side where they are lured and exploited in big cities. After some time, their dreams shatter and earning money to feed their family becomes their necessity.

Parmanand Verma from village Ranjit Bojha represent youths who dreams to travel to big cities to earn their living & maintain their living standard by earning handsome money. There are several pull and push factors which motivate people to take the unseen path which mostly ends up in misery.

Parmanand has returned from the big city where he went to try his luck. His village is situated at the Indo-Nepal border where many cases of unsafe migration & Human Trafficking are recorded. Most of the youth migrate to the State capital or other Metro cities to get work & quite often they travel to middle east countries for work, but sometimes they face exploitation and by the time they realize that they are being trafficked, it’s too late for them.

Caritas India Partner for Swaraksha Anit-Human Trafficking Program are creating awareness & sensitizing the community youth, women & children against human trafficking. Besides creating awareness, the partners are also taking initiatives to link the youths & women to Govt. Schemes, so that they get optimum benefits from those Govt. Schemes & can earn their livelihood without migrating to other Places. The objective of this linkages is not only to avail the Govt. Schemes benefit at their place but also to stop them from unsafe migration.

Parmanand is also one of the marginalized farmers under the Swaraksha AHT Program area where he does agricultural work on the small piece of land and rest of the time he looks for work opportunities in different big cities as he was unsatisfied with his present situation. Just before the lockdown, Swaraksha program has conducted a training on availing Govt. schemes for generating own livelihood for the youths of Ranjit Bojha Village.

“It was a triggering moment for me which inclined me to start looking for more information”, says Parmanand. “I started enquiring from the staff of the Swaraksha AHT program & soon I got the benefits from Govt. Schemes in the form of Onion seeds from the horticulture department. Though this can be meagre support for me it as an opportunity for me to do something here my village on my ancestral land”, said Parmanand confidently.

After sowing the onion seeds his responsibility and work increased which demanded more time from him but all of a sudden, the Covid-19 pandemic started. But even in the lockdown, he was able to visit his field and nurture his crop.

“Finally, now I am seeing the better yield of my hard work”, says Parmanand. As the lockdown is being uplifted from the cities, he can sell his produce in the local market with high demand. He is very happy that a small training has empowered him to earn without moving out of his village. Now he understood how he can enhance the production of onion in the next farming.

He is happy that despite being in a continuous lockdown he could feed his family by selling onion. The Income of Parmanand is doubled now, earlier he used to earn 8-10 thousand every month but now his earning reached up to 20 thousand, which has not only added value to his livelihood but also built his self-confidence to do something in his village. Caritas India Partner claims that somehow, we are reaching to the objective of our program by linking youths, women & Children to Govt. Schemes & benefits & making their village a better place to live instead of migrating to big towns for earning their livelihood. The situation arising from the Pandemic has disrupted the daily wage & migrant workers, but the Initiative taken by DEHAT, CI Partners team to control unsafe migration seems coming true at this point of time after reading Parmanand story.