The Role of Participatory Approach in implementing complex livelihood interventions: Qualitative Evidence from Central India
Abstract:
Despite registering the decline in poverty, rural communities in India continue to face challenges in uplifting their living standards as poverty has several dimensions. Such multidimensional challenges require multi-pronged interventions that have the capacity to address these dimensions simultaneously. In this article, we study the role of bottom-up approach where community members are empowered to play a pivotal role in implementation of the interventions. Such a groupbased approach provides the benefit of reaching a larger group of community members at a time and further facilitates robust network formation across rural communities. We study this approach in the context of a complex intervention program implemented by a Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) program implemented in the Chandrapur district of Maharashtra, India. Given the many CSR programs committed to create socio-economic value, understanding the drivers on how to create this sustainably is critical. We conducted 33 qualitative interactions covering the program managerial staff, field-implementation team, and rural community members. Overall, our findings show that a. robust engagement with community members is critical to effectively implement complex interventions Our findings highlight that (1) a leaner implementing team facilitates faster flow of intervention-specific knowledge, which helps to solve challenges in real-time, (2) tailoring interventions to the needs of community members and promoting collective ownership also renders the interventions sustainable in the long run.
