Giving Compass' Take:

• Prakriti Singh, writing for India Development Review, lists six lessons in grassroots leadership and development she learned from Sujata Khandekar, who led the Resource Organisations or CORO in India. 

• Khandekar believes that empowering marginalized communities through grassroots development work needs to be participatory and focus on mobilizing communities to shift mindsets from victims to changemakers. How is leadership at the core of global community development work?

• Read more about Sujata Khandekar and her work at CORO. 

Sujata Khandekar who led Community of Resource Organisations or CORO, an organisation at the forefront of grassroots leadership and activism, talks about how the process of empowerment unfolds within marginalised communities, and what it takes to be truly participatory.

Here’s what we learnt from her about building grassroots leadership.

  1. Make your programme relevant to the people. People will not actively and emotionally participate in an intervention unless it has relevance to their lives and their strengths.
  2. Leave your assumptions at the door  The notion that ‘poor people are lazy and don’t want to change’ is not true. One just needs to give them tools and words, and suggest that using them might offer some respite.
  3. Remember: Solidarity is the biggest asset of marginalised people. People gather courage by coming together. Collective risk is both possible and incredibly powerful because nobody is fighting alone. Individuals alone cannot make a difference, but together, they can.
  4. Give people from the community positions of power. The initiative for change has to come from ‘within’ – within a person, and within the community. And the mental shift from being a victim to being a changemaker is crucial in the social change process.
  5. Trigger a sense of identity. People accept the discrimination that comes along with their identity of being Dalit, Adivasi, or a woman, as fate. The realisation that it’s all human-made and hence can be changed empowers them.
  6. Understand and be aware of your privilege. One either hates people living in low-income communities or pities their conditions, but there’s never a sense of equality or connectedness with them.

Read the full article about grassroots leadership by Prakriti Singh at India Development Review.