Founded in 1995, Atmashakti is a right-based catalyst organization that coalesces marginalized communities for socio-economic and political empowerment. It incubates people's collectives, handholds them until they are mature, and acts as a mentor and facilitator for local people's collectives and their federations at the state and national levels. Atmashakti currently serves over one million families and plans to reach eight million families by expanding its work in these states to cover 10% of rural low-income families in India.
What is Grassroots Narratives?
Grassroot Narratives is a feedback redressal mechanism where communities at the grassroots can share their stories and engage directly with the relevant government authorities. It is a valuable tool for empowering communities, improving Government services and creating a more transparent and accountable system that benefits all stakeholders involved. Collaboration with like-minded partners will further enhance the impact and reach of this initiative. Communities take their narratives (grievances, challenges, feedback, needs, reports, etc.) to the authorities, and the records are not altered/ distorted/changed along the way. Grassroot Narratives address the need for increased transparency, accountability and efficiency in the implementation of Government schemes and services.
Despite the many schemes and initiatives launched by the government for the people, it remains a fact that many of the entitled beneficiaries do not get them because of a multitude of reasons. The reasons could be varied – remoteness, lack of awareness, inefficient implementation and monitoring process, lack of clarity and transparency, bureaucratic bottlenecks, and lack of accountability by the implementing agency/department. When these bottlenecks are reported to the relevant authorities, they get lost somewhere in transition or are not acted upon with the urgency it deserves.
Program Goals
Through Grassroots Narratives, we would like to empower communities by supporting them in providing feedback to stakeholders at both the local and state levels regarding bottlenecks in government schemes and services, create awareness among beneficiaries about government schemes and access mechanisms to ensure they receive their entitlements seamlessly, and promote timely service delivery with stipulated timelines.
We would like to establish a "Grassroots Narrative Hub" which will give grassroots groups a voice and platform to share their ideas, enable sharing of best-practices, facilitate learning from each other's strengths and spark innovation, and reduce the gap between service providers and beneficiaries. There will also be a digital support component for social media advocacy using grassroots narratives, collaborations for publishing and disseminating grassroots narratives, and research and analysis support.
Capstone Work
We would like a capstone student to help us build out Grassroots Narratives in a variety of ways. See potential deliverables below.
Capstone Student Benefits/Learning Opportunities
- Community-Centered Research Methods: Learn to design and implement research projects that prioritize the perspectives and needs of grassroots communities.
- Policy Impact Assessment: Acquire skills in evaluating the impact of policies and programs on local communities. Understand how to assess the effectiveness of government initiatives and identify areas for improvement based on community feedback and data.
- Build expertise in engaging with diverse stakeholders, including policymakers, NGOs, community leaders, and the media.
- Ethical Community Engagement: Explore ethical considerations when working closely with communities, ensuring respect for cultural norms, privacy, and informed consent. Develop sensitivity to the ethical dimensions of public analysis and policy making
We can be flexible on the exact deliverables so that they are aligned with a particular student's interest. We are interested in:
- A comprehensive Grassroot Narrative Initiative Model
- A Community Engagement Toolkit for engaging with grassroots communities effectively.
- A Policy Analysis Framework for analyzing the narratives collected from grassroots communities in the context of public policy.
- A comprehensive Advocacy and Communication Strategy which includes designing communication materials, identifying target audiences, and outlining advocacy approaches for influencing policy changes at the local, state, and national levels.
- A roadmap for implementing the Grassroot Narrative Initiative model in real-world scenarios.
Atmashakti aims to Launch the first Grassroot Narrative Journal by the end of 2023, but this project will be helpful in building on that work.
