Call for Applications: Work With Grassroots Communities to Improve Jaltol
CSEI-ATREE is starting a fellowship programme for Jaltol, the digital tool we developed to improve rural water security in India. We need help with developing use cases.
We developed Jaltol in 2021 because we wanted to address the data and capacity bottleneck that prevents effective rural water planning in India. This open-source tool offers easy access to data to help understand, diagnose and intervene better. It uses remote sensing data — rainfall, evapotranspiration, soil moisture, surface water/groundwater storage, land use/land cover — together on one platform in an easy-to-use format, making water accounting easier.
Read | Our Vision for Jaltol
A core part of our Jaltol work is community building, i.e. partnering with grassroots organisations who have years of experience with watershed development work and working with farmers and gram panchayats. We have signed Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) with two organisations — Foundation for Ecological Security and Watershed Support Services and Activities Network (WASSAN) to see how Jaltol can improve water budgeting exercises on the ground, and what we need to do improve its accuracy and broaden its capabilities.
We want to take this a step further. While our team has visited Dhodrobaru in Jharkhand, Anand in Gujarat and other locations where partner organisations are based, these have been brief one-off visits that would not have the same result as a more sustained, long-term engagement. This is why we want to start a Jaltol Fellowship programme.
You can read more about CSEI and the scope of this work here. Apply here.
The Jaltol Fellow will be expected to develop additional use cases for Jaltol and ensure that grassroots communities use the tool effectively to drive decision making on the ground. They would need to ‘embed’ themselves within CSEI’s CSO partner offices in one of these states — Gujarat, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh or Maharashtra — and support them with using the tool for strategising demand-side water management measures. (We are still finalising the exact locations as it would depend on our partner’s convenience. But if you are interested in the work and are open to being stationed in these states, do reach out to us.)
The fellowship will be for a period of 4–8 months. Fellows are expected to stay in the same place as the CSO to ensure that they can be available for planned and unplanned field work. In addition to this, they would also need to lead documentation of two case studies on how CSO partners used Jaltol — what they found useful, what they found challenging and what additional features they need. The fellow would also need to be thorough in terms of taking photos/videos during field visits (with permission), and writing at least two public-facing blogs that capture experiences on the ground.
Here’s a more detailed job description:
Roles and responsibilities:
- To understand the goals and objectives of the CSO they are embedded in
- To apply the data available within Jaltol to drive strategic decision making with the CSO through: i) Development of additional use cases for Jaltol (e.g. monitoring of interventions using Jaltol’s data); ii) Climate change assessments or modelling
- To conduct field level accuracy assessments of Jaltol’s data
- To document learnings
Additional responsibilities will be clarified based on the CSO partners’ needs.
Preferred qualification and background:
- Masters degree in any of these subjects: hydrogeology, hydrology, water resources or environmental science, environmental engineering, agricultural water management, soil and water engineering, geoinformatics or similar discipline (or a Masters student who has completed at least their second year in one of these disciplines).
- Ability to understand high-level organisational theories of change and develop organisational needs assessments
- Ability to think critically about the relevance of data and associated challenges within an organisation.
- Ability to complete tasks independently and work within a larger team environment
- Willingness to learn new techniques, and have an interest in the field and making a difference
- General awareness of geospatial data and remote sensing, in particular
- Working experience with standard office applications (such as Google Workspace)
- Willing to relocate to CSO partner’s location and work from there for 4–8 months
- Ability to write/communicate in English and another regional language (based on CSO partner’s location)
- Ability to liaise with external partners, including donors, and communicate effectively, both written and verbal.
- Demonstrated ability to organise work, manage time, determine priorities and meet deadlines.
This fellowship is available only for Indian nationals. You can read more about CSEI and the scope of this work here. Apply here.
