Strengthening Existing Partnership

Our partnership with Bihar Rural Livelihood Promotion Society (BRLPS) locally known as JEEViKA was recently extended for another year. This was an opportunity for us to extend our support to new verticals within our partner organization.

We started working with the Institutional Building & Community Building Team (IBCB) of JEEViKA, which seeks to ensure greater involvement of the community to build village and cluster level institutions. They are the first entrants in a new area so that self-help groups and other such institutions can be formed through mobilization, awareness and training. The idea envisaged creation and dissemination of information related to the processes and norms of institution building in a more effective manner to empower the community and its grassroots institutions.

To conceptualize and implement this plan, we organized a two-day training programme for IBCB Managers and Training Officers at Patna on the 14th and 15th of October 2015. There were 27 participants at this training programme who look after the IBCB operations and capacity building at their respective districts.

We started the training by explaining the DG approach and the evolution of our partnership with JEEViKA in Bihar. We used the new training module that we use to explain our approach called Pico Seekho (learn to operate pico), which covered the basics of video production and dissemination, and some videos on non-verbal communication, which proved to be very engaging for the audience. We also shared the current status of videos produced, disseminations and adoptions and the goals ahead, which was in line with the project goals envisaged by IBCB team of JEEViKA. We also focused on IBCB videos that had been already shot and how they would be evaluated in terms of the success of adoption. The discussions were aimed towards improving the quality of videos and processes and eventually making them more interesting and appealing to viewers, and improving adoptions.

The IBCB managers also shared their current roles and responsibilities, which was followed by an interesting dialogue about the possibilities they saw of contributing towards the Digital Green and JEEViKA partnership model. The participants also identified how crucial their role is in this entire process of adapting our approach into IBCB. For sure, they play a crucial role helping the video production team develop the content, approving the storyboards and videos. This sense of ownership among the staff of JEEViKA is crucial for achieving our goals. The participants were quite enthusiastic to learn the basics of video production and photography especially about different ways of framing their shots and photographic rules.

During the course of these two days, we screened four IBCB videos on different topics such as SHG formation, Social inclusion in VO, VO Meeting Process and Sub-committees in VO. The participants were very happy and surprised to see the videos on IBCB topics and on hearing that there are plans for more such content. They were also surprised to know that all these videos were shot by cadre staff (village and cluster level staff deployed by JEEViKA). This helped dispel misunderstandings that Digital Green shots all videos on their own. They understood how Digital Green facilitates the entire process and supports the trained cadre staff whenever required. The participants also got hands-on experience of operating a pico projector, learning its functional aspects.

At the close of day two, some of the participants shared their feedback using an innovative medium -a video. The IBCB Managers and Training Officers of JEEViKA assured their cooperation to our community-led video production and dissemination processes. They also showed a keen interest in the technology part of our approach and learnt the use of COCO (our online and offline data management tool) and analytics dashboard. The participants unanimously agreed that these videos will reduce their efforts while training the block and cluster level staff also.

Overall it was a great learning platform for both the participants and our staff where knowledge and information were exchanged. As they say ‘Well begun is half done!’ So hope this partnership will reap sweet results for both IBCB and JEEViKA as well as Digital Green.