PRIA coordinated conversations with partners, associates, supporters, experts, investors, and colleagues, coming from civil society, government, business, media, and academia in these six months.
PRIA completed 40 years of its kaleidoscopic journey on February 6, 2022.
Over these four decades, PRIA’s commitment to supporting the knowledge, voice and democratic participation of the excluded and marginalised has been accomplished in myriad ways. We started with the practice of participatory research as methodology for social mobilisation of women, adivasis and industrial and informal workers, and raised the question: Whose knowledge counts?
Our long-term interventions to build human and institutional capacity of civil society organisations and the sector is steeped in our core belief of creating an inclusive, just and democratic society.
When community-driven socio-economic development approaches were mandated through statutory institutions of local self-governance (panchayats and municipalities), PRIA’s innovative efforts to make them effective, accountable and responsive to the vulnerable and excluded households were scaled-up manifold.
In empowering women and girls to find their space and voice in a gender-just society, PRIA has demonstrated new methodology of mainstreaming gender institutionally, where working with boys and men, and safe private and public spaces has been the focus.
Recognising the importance of education and training of next generation researchers, professionals and scholars, PRIA supports post-secondary educational institutions to revise their curriculum and pedagogy and become socially relevant, with focus on including the philosophy and practice of community-based participatory research for generating and using knowledge for locally adapted global goals.
We are preparing to ‘re-tool’ PRIA for its future contributions nationally and internationally, in the aftermath of the pandemic and its widespread effects. Underlying structural inequalities have become starkly visible in the past year. Questions around the very survival of humanity and the planet – why are the current policies and models for socio-economic development not working, how do we mitigate the unequal impacts of continuous environmental degradation and climate change, and the need to recognise and nurture diversity, especially of gender and knowledge systems – cannot be ignored. Post-pandemic recovery has to rely much more on local, community-led solidarity actions, supported by redesigned institutions and active citizens.
Over the next six months, PRIA convened conversations on several such questions with partners, associates, supporters, experts, investors, colleagues – drawn from civil society, government, business, media and academia.
Come, hear our story – and shape our tomorrows, today.
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