Government

In the essay “Working with the government for educational change,” Rizwan Ahmed critically interrogates his experience as a CSO member of working with the governmental system, while striving toward ensuring the educational rights of children from marginal, migrant communities.

In the essay titled “Working with the government as a nobody,” Ashish Shrivastava discusses his organization’s journey in serving underserved children’s educational needs in a geography that has seen intense conflicts. He shows how active listening, building hyper-local partnerships, collaborating with a shared vision, and keeping a resolute focus on the field, can help in building credibility and effective partnerships with people and institutions in the government system.

This issue of Samuhik Pahal focuses on issues and perspectives related to CSO’s collaborative work with governments for educational change.

Rucha Pande and Sushant Kumar, in their article, show us how we can potentially contribute toward positively shifting the needle in the public education system through partnerships with the government.

Madhukar Banuri and Aashima Jain, in their essay, share three principles for creating effective collaborations with the government. These include understanding governmental structures, avoiding the creation of parallel systems, and adopting an empathetic approach toward government officials.

In the article titled “Reflections on our journey of engaging with the government system in Gopalganj, Bihar,” Surya Prakash Rai demonstrates how co-creating capacities, old fashioned humility, sharing credit with government officials and institutions, and subtly creating visibility of one’s work, all go a long way in building lasting and effective partnerships with the public education system.