Background

Movement drives growth in India; millions migrate annually, crossing borders and state lines to improve their lives and their families' prospects for the future. However, for many migrants, this new life journey comes with invisible roadblocks. The transition to a new community can require navigating a complicated network of informal economies, unfamiliar banking systems, and social isolation. Because they don’t have the resources to manage their money or access to welfare, a large percentage of migrants exist on the fringes of the economy that they help to create.

Social barriers also contribute to the problem; the way migration is studied typically examines it through the lens of statistics rather than by telling the stories behind those statistics, which creates misconceptions about migration and immigrants and makes it difficult to build community ties between migrants and non-migrants. Facilitation Resources & Opportunity for Migrants (FROM) was created to help address both issues. We believe that real assimilation involves two parts: providing migrants with practical financial education while developing empathy through storytelling. By combining these two approaches, we will help turn the experience of displacement into the experience of belonging. It is our hope that migration will no longer be seen as an exception, but rather as a necessary, everyday process that strengthens the social fabric of India.