Aryan Chand.
When Aryan Chand began volunteering at Hamari Pahchan's weekly health camps, he expected most of his work to be about the camp itself. Instead, he kept hearing the same problem from the women who came through its doors. Some had heard of government schemes but had no idea whether they qualified. Others were eligible but could not work out how to apply. In some cases a name was spelled differently on two documents, or an address was out of date, or a form was available online but the woman holding the phone did not know where to begin.
Aryan started helping them, one application at a time. That quiet effort has since grown into Women Saving Circle, an initiative that helps women in underserved communities understand and access government welfare and Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) schemes, under which benefits reach a person's bank account directly. Now 16 and a scholar at British School New Delhi, Aryan has taken the work to more than 10 villages in Delhi, conducting over 100 camps and reaching more than 1,000 women.
"I realised that many people were eligible for government support but did not know how to complete the process," he says. "Sometimes the problem was as small as a spelling difference or an old address. They did not need a new solution. They needed help accessing the solution that already existed."
The work itself is refreshingly direct. Aryan and his fellow volunteers meet residents at community camps, explain how the schemes work, go through the documents each woman already has, and then help her complete her application and digital registration. Hamaari Pahchan's health camps and community network gave the initiative a direct line to residents, and its logistical support has helped the team carry that outreach into different communities.
The initiative has concentrated on two programmes in particular. The first is e-Shram, the Government of India's national database for unorganised workers, which lets eligible workers register on a single central platform and is meant to connect them with social security and welfare schemes. The second is Ayushman Bharat, which includes the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (AB PM-JAY), providing health cover to eligible beneficiaries.
For the women Aryan meets, though, understanding what a scheme offers is often only the first step. A person may hold every required document and still find that the details on them do not match. Someone may own a smartphone but have never opened a government portal. An application may remain incomplete simply because the instructions were hard to follow. For benefits that depend on accurate records, a small mismatch can hold up support that is otherwise due.
"These are things that can seem very small," Aryan says. "But for someone who does not know how to fix them, they can stop the entire process."
That is where the volunteers step in. They sit beside applicants, work through the forms line by line and try to find what is holding an application back. Sometimes that means explaining a scheme, sometimes checking documents, and sometimes simply guiding someone through a website she has never used before.
Spending time at the camps changed how Aryan saw the problem. He had assumed awareness would be the main barrier. He came to understand that telling someone about a scheme and helping her actually receive its benefits are two very different things, a distinction that has shaped the initiative as it has grown.
It has also made him think differently about the digital skills that come so naturally to his generation. For a teenager, opening a website, uploading a document or filling in an online form is routine. For someone with little contact with digital government services, the same tasks can feel out of reach.
"The Government has created schemes that can make a real difference to people's lives," Aryan says. "It is heartwarming to see women gain access to the benefits they are entitled to and use them to better the lives of their families and themselves."
His work offers a closer view of something easily missed when welfare policy is seen from a distance. A scheme can exist, funding can be available and a portal can be running smoothly, yet a person can still struggle to benefit. For Aryan, closing that gap does not always call for a new programme or a new piece of technology. Sometimes it takes someone willing to sit down with an applicant and work through the process with her.
He now plans to take Women Saving Circle to more neighbourhoods and reach more families, building on the work already done through Hamari Pahchan's network. The aim, as it was at that first health camp, remains simple: to help people move from knowing that support exists to actually being able to receive it.
