Community mobilisation & Climate Change- Anjanapura Edition 3 | Echo by SiS. ??

We have already spoken to you about the water crisis ?? in Anjanapura, and how we brought people together to solve it. And now, for the finale- how we made it happen.

(And in case you missed our previous chapters, click here to access all our previous newsletters.)

Coming back to the secret ingredient that got us this far. Any guesses?

We see the strength and value communities bring to climate action, and the only reason we decided to make this into a 3 part series, was to ensure what helps us, can also help you ??. Want to know more on how we can get these to work for your programs -click here to get in touch.

If you're in the social sector, you probably know the drill: research, design, and diffuse. But let’s face it, this model often sidelines the community—the very people we’re here to help. This approach makes us forget that they understand their issues best.

We are here to push you to think differently, to push you to be process innovators and let the process do the magic for you!

Let’s begin with why we need this. When working with communities, are you faced with the following questions?

?Do you feel disconnected from the community

?Do you feel you don’t understand the problem as well as the community does?

?Do you feel the community engagement and participation could be better?

What if you designed with the community, instead of for them? ???

Designing for them (at the risk of sounding extreme) is outdated. Dr Ingrid Mulder, professor of social transformations at TU Delft says exactly that. She believes that smart, innovative solutions only work when they’re built into the community’s daily life—and trust us, she knows what she’s talking about! In her work on ‘Co-creative partnerships as catalysts for social change’ she quotes the design for livability project, which used service design and co-creation to strengthen relationships of stakeholders.

Along with our partners, SOCHARA and Yuva Cafe, we are working towards a similar cause.

Here is why it’s worth your efforts and viable for long term:

?Better ownership by the community

?Effective brainstorming from the get go

?Better trust and rapport-building

?Higher motivation levels in the community

?And a long lasting chain of mindset & practice shift

In such a process, feedback takes a front seat. The community accepts the project as ‘theirs’. But how do we materialise projects through co-creation?

COLLABORATION IS KEY???!!

Imagine this,

?There exists a space where youth from the community gather to learn. Today, the facilitator of this community space, few social workers and system designers have come together to take baby steps towards solving the community’s water issue. The youth gets excited at the opportunity to conduct surveys in their own neighbourhood. They get a chance to share with people around them, tools designed to create awareness around water, health and climate change. While taking charge of the welfare of their community, the youngsters build interpersonal skills. ?

This is exactly what the youth from Anjanapura, SOCHARA, Social Innovation Studio and Makkala Jagriti came together to do at Yuva Cafe, the youth community space in Anjanapura. The key word here is community mobilisation ??????.

Want the full report where we break it down in more detail our project in Anjanapura? Click to download the full report!

So, how did co-creation change the course of this project?

1. The community connect enabled the conversation to flow & helped people open up easily.
2. Households were more receptive to the information cause it did not come from the outsider.
3. The youth took it as a challenge and personally, it enabled them to cover more houses in 2 days than our teams usually do in a week. Yes, they covered 150+ houses.
4. The mobilisers could not get enough, it helped them establish credibility in their community & this motivated them to continue the mobilisation beyond the 2 days of implementation.

Do you think your organisation can make space for all the trickling changes that co-design can offer? Lets chat.

What to look forward to?

• Did you know that today (Nov 14th) is Children’s Day and World Diabetes Day? We worked on an interesting program to help empower caregivers of children with Type 1 diabetes. Yes we will share it in detail, and yes it will be a multi part series.
• Our team is on their way to Raipur to test tools designed for workforce wellbeing. You’ll find updates on that soon!