Weaving relationships for impactful communities
Challenged with one damaged lung, and voice almost but lost, a young Kumar Gandharva spent a few years in hot and dry Dewas in Central India. Devoid of music, he rediscovered a new sound there, hearing Kabir Dohas sung by travelling troupes.
A weaver in 15th century India stamped his presence across a large part of the subcontinent, simply giving forward a template for soulful singing. How many of these songs really trace back to the same weaver is unknown, but the impact from the wide network of Kabir’s followers continue to this day, inspite of lack of much organized institution around it. One of its beneficiaries was the legendary singer, Kumar Gandharva.
Communities of practice around belief based systems keep evolving over time. What can we learn from them for impact driven communities such as for Water. In the past 2 articles of this series, we explored two themes:
- That people aren’t seeking for one solution, but simply means of finding each other
- Reach can multiply with new converts getting upgraded as evangelists themselves
Having understood how a foundational experience of a monthly Water Quality Management Course is now being sustained for a year, we now come to the next challenge: how do we connect this community, and help it to keep learning and solving problems. Getting to 1200 Water Quality Champions spread over 300+ districts, we have the challenge of how does one remain connected with the needs of the community, and help the group find others to solve their own problems.
A structure, template and format help. In the case of Kabir’s communities, a Doha serves as a structure. But beyond that are also belief systems, and values that are often less tangible, but could be more important.
Two years back, we started experimenting with what is called Guided Mentoring. This is a format developed by a university medical professor that helps networks of field based medical practitioners to become experts over time. By helping Water Quality Champions express the problems that they face and by letting other champions contribute with their experience, we started out with a language of interaction and medium where one can keep coming back and connecting.
When we began, we used to search around for experts who can help the problems coming up from practice. After 6 months, we realized that the group is rich enough to have experts within it. In fact, people were willing experts, and all we had to do was to ask.
We also realized a couple of things during our process of experimentation:
- Hierarchies and language barriers make it uncomfortable for people to come forward and offer their ideas on problem solving
- Many dont feel that they have something to offer, so creating a comfort space that is inclusive becomes very important
Each Guided mentoring session attracts 30 to 50 Water Quality Champions. Once the problem is presented, there are breakouts within which the problem and approaches are discussed. Here is where people meet each other and discover newer relationships. Problems are revisited over time and the community comes back to support them. This way, by repeatedly tackling different problems every week, the community strengthen itself, learns new approaches, and finds ways of solving the problems that they face themselves.
The value of these Guided mentoring sessions have been that:
- Sitting in one place, a Water Quality Champion keep learning and also gets the feeling of being able to contribute to other’s problems (A field worker from Chattisgarh mentioned once how she felt elated when she was trying to address an Engineer’s problem from Rajasthan.
- The community feels that this is one place where you can go anytime and never feel disconnected after a course is done (A chemist from Odisha expressed how these sessions helps make her feel that she is part of a community of people beyond what she sees in everyday life)
The 40 Guided mentoring sessions till now have diverse representation across the country, and across Water quality issues. They have been presented by a wide variey of presentors with different affiliations. After the sessions, many of the participants have made progress within their problems, having found approaches from the sessions itself. Quite often, it is also about finding people, connecting them and trying out something new. In all, 850 participants have participated in these 40 sessions over the past 1 year.
An archive of the case presentations are maintained in the Water Quality Network platform at https://waterquality.network/published-listing/caseReports. This archive then feeds back as content into the monthly Water Quality Management (WQM) course as case based learning assignments where participants crowdsource ideas for problems presented from these challenges. This way, a loop of practice is developed over months, and many ways of interconnections are developed through this practice of Guided Mentoring.
Back in Dewas, Kumar Gandharva discovered a newer form of music for himself, as Nirgun, without form. The travelling Kabir troupes had worked its charm once more, here bringing back a very important artiste for the country. Just as he spent his life weaving threads and singing about a good life, Kabir’s communities wove their own threads, interconnecting people far apart from each other. Along the way, they have given succour and relief to many, and the movement continues after 5 centuries.
The Water Quality Network is woven together by this process of Guided Mentoring that continues after monthly WQM course programmes. It is very important to realize that a constant process of weaving is needed for Communities of Practice to stick together and find each other in different ways. This way, the network team allows itself to step back, and facilitates a communication that helps peer-to-peer discovery and problem solving.
