One of the courses that Academy students have to take is “Managerial Oral Communication.” I rarely (almost never, actually) use PowerPoint in my classes, but for a change, I decided to deliver this presentation to them. (I’ve included notes below so you can have an idea of what was discussed in the class itself.)
Report on a workshop offered by the Tata-Dhan Academy, Madurai
Post-independence India has witnessed an immense struggle against poverty. A variety of stakeholders have resorted to innovative and diverse models to face the challenges ahead. NGOs have played key roles in furthering the efforts made by these stakeholders to reduce poverty. In this process, development practitioners have amassed a wealth of experience and learning, especially at the grassroots level.
This treasure chest of learning is there for the asking; unfortunately, knowledge sharing in the development sector is severely under utilized and much of the valuable grassroots learning experiences remain obscure and localized. Precious time, human resources, and other resources can be put to optimal use if these learnings are made widely and freely available.
Individual reflections and group discussions on this disparity indicated that a forum was necessary to make these learnings easily accessible to people; such a forum would help develop contemporary development theories and concepts. The Transferring Grassroots Experiences into New Development Theories and Concepts knowledge-building workshop is one such forum, and it was designed to facilitate sharing and learning and to enable practitioners to theorize and conceptualize based on their experiences. By creating this platform and enabling development practitioners themselves to present their theories, DHAN Foundation and the Tata-Dhan Academy hope to set in motion a very powerful process whereby the gaps between theories, grassroots level practitioners, and the community can be narrowed.
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Many people can be a bit intimidated by the thought of diary writing. A large part of this is the recollection of childhood diary writing experiences filled with mundane details which look something like:
Dear Diary,
Today I got up at 6:30 and had five idli for breakfast. Then I went to the tea shop and had two cups of tea and …
You get the point. No one—not even you—is likely to want to read or re-read those words a month later.
So, why are we asking you to keep a “Development Diary” then1?
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India is often heralded both as the land of diversity and as the land of unity. This is a claim reinforced by the wealth of religious, cultural, and linguistic diversity coexisting with many things uniquely “Indian” within the country’s boundaries. Now, with India’s impressive growth, “income” can be added as an element of “diversity”; can the same be said for improving its status as a land of unity? “India: How’s it Growing?” published in Developments magazine asks the question “How many Indias are there?” and tries to evaluate the inclusiveness of India’s economic growth.
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I couldn’t help it. I had to start writing my own writing guide based on a few of the things that really irritate me when I’m editing or correcting something for someone else. It’s a work in progress and it’s being done somewhat haphazardly (which probably means that I’m eventually going to get lazy about it after a while and not add new tips). But I’m having fun doing it—it helps relieve some of the frustration I sometimes feel when editing….
Download a nicely formatted PDF version for offline viewing.
Process documentation and journal writing should become a natural extension of the work that you do while you are in the field. Both of these types of writing are meant to describe what happened in the field, and both of them will include different kinds of information to help you later on when writing your reports. But while these writing tasks are related, they are different in their purposes. Broadly speaking, process documentation is purely objective, while journal writing is more flexible and allows for more subjective commentary. The following document was written to help you get started with process documentation and journal writing1. I urge you to take the included information as “guidelines” and not as a prescriptive set of rules or requirements.
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Last summer, the Centre for Micro Finance took on a group of interns to help with several of their projects. Two of the interns, Rachel Bergenfield and Neera Jain—by the way, the most awesome interns ever!—agreed to undertake the huge project of filming a documentary in a few short weeks, and here is the result of their efforts!
I’ve just completed compiling the fist issue of the newsletter for the Centre for Micro Finance, “Eye on Micro Finance”. The goal is to get this out every other month, but honestly, I doubt whether that is a realistic goal or not.
I took advantage of this project to familiarize myself with Adobe InDesign for page layout. Overall, I must say it’s pretty easy to use and results look refreshingly good when compared to earlier efforts merely using MS Word—and I know I’ve barely scratched the surface of what is possible.
I’m guessing that the layout will essentially remain the same for each issue, with the exception of the “cover” (which for me is one of the more fun stages in the design process anyway).
You can download the PDF or view the articles directly at the Centre for Micro Finance website.