Date
28-Nov-2022 to 30-Nov-2022 		Location
Trichy, Chrnnai		 Format
Local

Participatory Research in Asia – PRIA launched the third cohort of the CAPSTONE Programme for the Southern India region. A total of 19 organisations were shortlisted through a due diligence process. The first workshop for this cohort was organized on Participatory Organisational Capacity Assessment (POCA) in Trichy, Tamil Nadu from 28-30 November 2022. 

The session started with a round of introduction where participants from each of the organisations shared briefly about themselves and the work they have been doing.

After the introduction, participants were asked to share their expectations from the workshop. The major expectations included writing a good proposal, communicating with the stakeholders, particularly with the governments, resource mobilisation (mainly from the domestic funders), sustainability of the organisation (including developing a second line of leadership, and financial sustainability), impact measurement, integration of technology, accessing the external environment.

Dr Kaustuv Kanti Bandyopadhyay, Director, PRIA summarised the expectations in three major sub-heads:

· Improving internal capacities

· Engage with the stakeholders

· Awareness of external environments (including public policies and programmes and critical actors)

Dr Rajesh Tandon, Founder President, PRIA narrated his journey of PRIA over the last 40 years. As part of PRIA’s 40th Anniversary, it asked its partners from several sectors including government, civil society, academia, media, and former colleagues how PRIA should contribute in future. The responses were heart-warming but the partners suggested that it should do more of what it has been doing all these years. It gave us a sense of achievement that our work has been helpful to so many people. However, the bigger question that lingered was what we should do now and what approach should we take to be still relevant.

The facilitators and participants discussed how things have changed since they started off their organisations. The advent of technology, changes in the expectations of society, changing public policies, etc. have forced the non-profit sector to rethink their relevance and re-strategize their interventions. The need for new networking and partnerships has increased many folds.

The facilitators concluded the discussion by requesting the participants for their intellectual contribution for the benefit of the programme and the need to create evidence that investment in strengthening the institutional capacities of CSOs can indeed enhance societal returns.

The next session started with facilitators asking each organisation to write the answers to below-mentioned questions.

1. What change your organisation wants to bring the society?

2. What are the achievements so far?

3. What challenges your organisation is facing?

A number of common challenges mentioned by the participants included fundraising (including accessing funds from CSR and governments), staff turnover, staff quality, government regulation and the pandemic (Covid 19).

Organisational Framework for Non-Profits

The next session focussed on understanding the organisational framework. The facilitators started the session by posing a question to the group if no funds are there, no staff is there, why do we want to continue? What are we doing that is so important that needs to be continued?

We generally start with the vision of an organisation i.e., the change we want to see. This answers why the organisation exists or what contribution the organisation would make to realising the vision. The programme follows the vision and mission of the organisation that tells what the organisation should do to bring these changes. We need people to implement these programme activities. Dr Tandon gave the example that before setting up PRIA, he was training women and when he thought this work needs to be expanded beyond his capacities, he set up PRIA. Helping others at a scale needs organisation.

The programme would be broken down into main tasks and secondary tasks. When the organisation engages more people, it needs to define the roles and responsibilities of various people. As the organisation moves ahead, we need leadership and governance.

The external environment continues to affect the organisation largely- funds (and other resources), government regulation, and expectations of donors and the community we are working with are governed by dynamic factors and hence keeping up is important. In recent years, operating a non-profit has become difficult and one of the greatest challenges is to comply with the statutory regulations. Dr Tandon also emphasised how rules are for everyone by giving an example of the Supreme Court asking a state government to shut down a relief programme because the government was paying below the prescribed minimum wages due to the limitation of funds. Similarly, a non-profit can’t rely on goodwill because of its good work in my organisation. It also needs to follow government procedures and regulations with no exceptions. If we don’t have the capacity and willingness to work, we may be asked to close down.

The session concluded with a collective understanding of the need to redefine ourselves because of changing contexts (mostly because of our good work). Refining of vision, mission, and strategy of working (including with whom and where) would help older CSOs.

The objective of this session was to understand the importance of and strategies for gender inclusion within the organisation. The session was conducted virtually by PRIA’s facilitator, Ms Nandita Pradhan

Bhatt. Through multiple group activities, she brought up the issue of gender inclusion within organisations. She emphasised that special commitment is needed for gender mainstreaming and not just to fulfil donor criteria. The use of gender-sensitive tools in all aspects of the organisation- culture, gender-balanced staff, key positions on board, performance review, and training programmes have to be encouraged. We should be documenting gender policies using a sharp lens and recognising that gender is not binary. Gender Audits should be conducted. Inclusion and participation will be ensured when it is not part of our language anymore. Creating systems and procedures would integrate gender in organisations, e.g., recruitment policies, travel policies, etc.

Introduction to POCA

The session started with a brief recap of the previous sessions. The participatory organisational capacity assessment (POCA) tool was introduced to participants and its components- strategic components, programme planning, monitoring and evaluation, organisational management, organisational governance and leadership, financial management and legal compliances were discussed. One of the organisations put forward its concern that it has been working with children in a community where parents migrate to different regions for work and children are either left behind with their grandparents or accompanied them. In both cases, their education is not prioritised. The organisation’s concern is that it only gets about 6-7 months with these children and them struggling with creating a measurable impact with these children. The facilitators gave them examples of the Mobile Crèche and Charwaha literacy programmes. In both cases, innovative strategies have been employed by the organisations. In continuation with the discussion the facilitators also posed questions like why the organisation want to work with children whose parents are migrating. Why doesn’t organisation work on livelihoods instead so that parents don’t migrate in the first place? There could be multiple strategic choices, but the organisation is the one which has to decide on those alternative strategies. Thus, revisiting their vision, mission & strategy becomes important.

All the organisations used the tool with the support of facilitators.

Reflection session & Prioritization

Major reflections from the exercise are:

· POCA tool gives a bigger picture of the organisation which we tend to forget once we grow larger

· Need for the federation of CSOs as a networking initiative should be thought of

· Donor engagement has to be learned keeping the organisation aligned with the vision and mission

Major prioritised areas included strategic planning, participatory planning, monitoring and evaluation (including proposal writing), governance and leadership, use of ICT and communication, financial management and resource mobilization (both local and through proposals with donors including CSR)

Testimonials

1. POCA is one of the best self-assessment tools for the organisation which has been developed holistically and it requires a lot of participation from the NGOs and accordingly needs independent mentoring and coaching sessions whenever required. – Mr. Sathiaseelan, SUKRUPA.

2. Most of the OD providers conduct sessions on specific topics like leadership but this is the first time we are part of a customised tailor-made programme for each organisation based on its own assessment. – Mr. Surya Prasad, Padala Charitable Trust