A volunteer association that develops young people into responsible citizens through social work, an on field finishing school.
SWANS (the Social Welfare Association of Neo Socialites) is a youth volunteer association that treats social work as a finishing school, growing the soft skills that classrooms rarely teach.
Through volunteering, students and young people, both employed and unemployed, acquire teamwork, team building, leadership, resource mobilisation and management skills. More than skills, it teaches compassion, respect for the weaker sections of society, ethics and responsible management, shaping young people into capable and responsible citizens.
SWANS has grown into a nationwide association with a volunteer base of more than 1,100. It works closely with SCALE, the social credit system that recognises and rewards the contribution of these volunteers.
OASiS formed SWANS to meet the long-term volunteer needs of NGOs and to build a sense of responsibility among young people. It was initiated in May 2007 and established as an NGO in March 2008, after a summer social camp in June 2007 and the formation of a first city chapter in Bhopal working with five local NGOs and their projects.
Alongside it, OASiS conceived a social credit system to give socially contributing young people a respectable status and to act as a bridge between the corporate and social sectors. That became SCALE, whose pilot ran through SWANS.
India has grown enormously in recent decades, but that growth has unsettled millions of agriculture-dependent livelihoods and left the line between a privileged India and an underprivileged one sharper than before. If the young people of the first spent some of their time contributing what they know to the second, the distance between them would narrow.
The obstacle is that in a competitive economy young people are pulled into a race for professional and financial success. Respect follows qualifications, designation, employer, assets and income. Whatever someone contributes to society is overlooked, and often mocked. Sensitivity gets lost, and with it the dignity of labour.
Encouraging volunteering is therefore not a matter of appeals. It only becomes self-sustaining when social good earns real recognition, and when young people, institutions and companies can each see a reason to seek it. That is what social credits are for. Unlike carbon or environment credits they carry no cash incentive; they are advantage based, raising the standing of a person or an organisation. The system depends on a matching recognition mechanism from institutions, corporates, NGOs, government and the political system.
SWANS was built to be replicated city by city, and its structure carries its own vocabulary:
Starting from Bhopal, chapters were opened in Delhi and Mumbai, each with its own need assessments for partner NGOs and its own participation routes for volunteers and organisations. Camps and events have included Pehal in 2009, Hum Honge Kaamyab in 2011, the Dhunwani camp and a forest camp, alongside standing working groups in Bhopal and Delhi.
The aim is a common platform the length and breadth of the country, where people can join hands and weave back a torn social fabric, and where anyone can see the good in a person who has been quietly doing it.
To start a chapter, host volunteers at your institution, or put volunteers to work on a project, write to oasisorg.india@gmail.com.
A 360 degree system that scores social contribution and awards credits, mobilising youth, institutions and corporates toward volunteering and rewarding responsible action.
A shared platform that brings community, university, corporate and government together to brainstorm and test solutions for long pending problems, at both grassroots and university level.
Builds critical thinking, awareness and empathy through everyday, experience based learning, the skills today's exam driven schooling tends to leave out.
Whether you bring funds, a fresh idea, or an unsolved problem from the community you serve, there is a way in.
