Working with government

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.

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.

Pranjali Pathak and Annie Louis, in their article “Moving the needle, toward scale,” reaffirm that collaborating with governments is a must, if we want to positively transform education in the country.

In his piece titled “Collaborative horizons,” Rohit Shetti shares his organization’s journey in government partnerships, and shows how aligning with existing policies, schemes and structures, organizational credibility and adaptability, and developing a shared vision with departmental leadership, are all critical parts of the process.

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