Our Purpose
We believe that each individual has great potential. We believe in equal opportunities.
Through empowerment and employment, we are enabling impoverished women, originally from slum areas, to work with technology. Women in tech just got a whole new meaning!
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By choosing NAYA as your image-annotation provider, you help real people help themselves out of generations of extreme poverty.
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Why NAYA? Impact over time
When our co-founders got to know the resilient women of Bindal slum, it became apparent that they are more than capable of learning and working hard to create value for their own lives. Other organizations have tried to help them, but life in the slum is busy when living day to day. They were frustrated with NGOs and aid projects that come and go. What they need is lasting opportunities, where they are in charge of their own faith.
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NAYA = नया = NEW
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NAYA offers young women from the slum areas of Dehradun, India, a steady tech job. But NAYA is more than just a job, it is a new path toward empowerment. We provide our Indian colleagues with data knowledge and training, private economic courses, information on women's rights, and English language courses. In addition, we offer childcare, office facilities away from the harsh slum environment, lunch, and transportation to and from work. The result is a prosperous environment where rapid personal growth is a main characteristic.
"At 10 years old my parents made me quit school to help provide for the family, and at 15 years old my parents arranged my marriage. I have since had two kids, and all I want is for them to have a better life than me. After Eirin and Victoria asked me to join NAYA, I learned to operate a computer and finished my first annotation projects. For the first time in my life, I dare to dream that I can move away from the Bindal slum. At the NAYA office I feel safe, and get a break from a tough life."
Sarita (21), NAYA annotation expert,
Dehradun, India
What is it like to live in a slum area?
It is important to emphasize that descriptions of slums regard the place, not the people that live there. The slum areas around Bindal Bridge in Dehradun are home to hundreds of thousands of people. Waste is all around, also in the toxic river running between settlements, and most people work as waste-pickers barely making enough to get their families through the day. It is normal for children to exit school in 5th grade, to help their family and engage in child labor. Alcohol and drug abuse is not uncommon. Without access to clean water, sanitation facilities, and stable housing conditions, it is easy to understand that the people of Bindal slums are more resilient than most of us. The conditions are especially rough for women.
Dehradun is just the beginning
NAYAs current operations take place in Northern India. Dehradun is the capital and the largest city of the western Himalayan state; Uttarakhand. Over the last decades, the Dehradun population has grown fourfold. With the increasing population, the urban poor mainly reside in slum areas found alongside the Bindal and Rispana rivers and today 25% of the Dehradun population lives in slum areas. This is consistent with the global statistics on slum population - a quarter of all humans live in slum areas. The potential for NAYA to empower people all over the world is significant, and we aim to scale further in India, and to other continents.
