
Centre for CDC and CDCD > Stories of Change > Gram Vikas, India

Interview with Ms Chitra Choudhury of Gram Vikas, India

: Chitra Choudhury

'We learnt so much from the change stories'

Gram Vikas breaks through barriers of gender, social class and economic status for sanitation of Indian communities. Chitra Choudhury, who works for the organisation’s Planning and Monitoring section, explains how her organisation uses stories of change as an evaluation methodology for its approach.

Chitra tells that Gram Vikas works through communities in the marginalised parts of India in more than 700 villages in the Eastern part of the country. The organisation’s main progress takes place around infrastructure services in rural areas for access to sanitation and drinking water for villages.

The work of Gram Vikas involves a great amount of community action and participation. Chitra explains: ‘The starting point of all Gram Vikas' activities is the community. Communities take their own action and develop a community based management system. Gram Vikas merely acts as a facilitator.’

One of the core principles in the work of Gram Vikas is inclusion. This means that all households in a village must be involved in the development process and that they must benefit equally. This 100% inclusion requirement is an important condition of the programme.

: The village of Bahalpur

Overcoming traditional barriers

‘It is not an easy task to bring this about. Families have to work through all traditional barriers and mindsets to see how that 100% inclusion can happen,’ Chitra points out. ‘In order to undertake the project in a village, rich and poor, men and women and people from different castes must cooperate.’

Even more, it takes hard work to convince and mobilise every family. Considering there is no charity involved, people have to put in a lot of financial and non financial contribution and have to build their own proper sanitation facilities. Gram Vikas helps them to find out ways to mobilise resources.

To understand the process of change in the communities, the organisation invited one of the villages to tell their story of change. ‘We wanted to know how the change had affected the community,’ says Chitra. ‘Has it really affected for the good? We also wanted to know what their views were, and their perceptions what change should be like.’

During a storytelling workshop the people of the village came together to share their experiences. ‘The theme was around water. They told about the situation over the last forty years and what has happened since they invited us to come and work in their village,’ tells Chitra.

: ALCS in progress

Village affairs

‘We learnt so much from their change story’, says Choudhury, ‘because in the process our staff got to know the nuances. It was like getting to know all different aspects. Not only the good practices of the village, but also some things that had not changed like they were supposed to have.’

One of the major outcomes was that people benefited differently from the new situation. The women immediately benefited by having clean water in their homes, not having to go out anymore. Chitra: ‘They had more leisure time. They could simply relax or watch television.’

‘But that they can definitely play a better role in the village affairs, was something that the village community totally agreed on. It appeared that because things had been handled well by other people (i.e. men), the women did not feel the need to come in and have a say in the larger decision-making. To us this was very valuable information and something that we can really work upon.’

: ALCS in progress

Reflection

After the pilot case study, all involved staff members thought that storytelling should be a methodology that should be practised more. Chitra: ‘We should examine if there are really similar patterns in the communities we work in, which will give us insight.’

Not an easy task according to Chitra, because staff needs to be trained and Gram Vikas has many employees. ‘Another challenge is to how to make the methodology not a ‘just do it’, but also let our staff experience the value behind it.’

‘But I really treasure the element of reflection in this methodology,’ Choudhury states. ‘Many times people work closely with communities and just engage in implementation. They do not have the time to take a step back; they just see all the time schemes and problems. A real shame, because we can learn so much from the communities.’