Lessons Learned: What Our Programs Have Taught Us
Ever since its establishment, ShivaMaya has been working interminably to organize regular educational workshops, health awareness camps, and vocational training courses with the aim of reaching out to the marginalized sections of the society and give them the opportunity to have their voices heard.
We have visited villages, suburbs, dingy by-lanes in some forgotten part of the city, slums sprawled next to posh south Kolkata neighborhoods - and wherever we went, the one constant was the sheer enthusiasm and adoration with which our volunteers were received by the people we met.
Our model of partner engagement and community outreach has helped us build collaborations with local youth associations in these areas. These youth associations are run by young people who are genuinely invested in the welfare of the people in their neighborhoods. These organizations helped us identify the problems shared by the members of their community and also helped us device creative, long-term solutions to address these problems.
We came across many challenges in our negotiations and discussions with these organizations. Very early on we realized that, on some occasions, it’s difficult to find support for suggested programs and to come to a compromise that is acceptable to all the parties involved and that it’s important to find that middle-ground between their expectations and the reality of the situation. To deal with these challenges, we came up with a model that we call CAPE – Communication, Association, Preparation, and Engagement.
Communication – Communication is always key. To reach out to these communities and get any meaningful work done, we appointed Volunteer Community Outreach Coordinators who acted as our representative for their assigned partner location.
Association – We endeavored to further strengthen our association with these partners by getting them more directly involved in the decision-making process at every stage.
Preparation – We realized that in order to reach out to these communities, we needed to research and learn more about them. Preparation and research helped us identify their problems and formulate issue-specific strategies.
Engagement – Lastly, engagement went far beyond showing up a few times and bringing them gifts or organizing sporadic events. We wanted to be friends with these people, be there for them for any problem and make them feel safe with us. To this end, we appointed Community Engagement Volunteers who kept us connected to the communities through regular engagement.
We have a long way to go. This is just the beginning. Our journey so far has taught us how we can change ourselves to serve our community better and we intend to keep on learning and evolving with time and experience.
