Starting An NGO During Covid-19
By: Akash Kumar Nigam
Tags: Rural Development, Change, Ngo, Social Change, India

Starting An NGO During Covid-19

The idea behind this piece is it may be of use to fellow students of change who want to start their NGO but are wondering if it’s the right time. I would contend it is the right time. We started our social purpose organization ‘Kayantar foundation’ in the prime of the pandemic in India. We surmised there can’t be a better time to work for communities. But soon enough we started realizing the operational issues that emerged due to a stalled nation were serious. Various solutions popped up at different stages as we operated with limited resources.

Calibrating for the new normal

Changes had to be made so our program was implementable in a Covid world. And also to make sure that our work tackled a more immediate reality. There were several questions we had to think through. One that was popular in the team was whether you still work for outcomes that are unrelated to the pandemic, outcomes that are long term such as a higher quality of education in the Nuh district of Haryana. It was an interesting question to ask ourselves as development professionals. One can’t help but think if, in tumultuous times like these, all actors should work against the threat or despite it. Which actors in a nation need to divert all of their attention towards the pandemic? And which need to keep on performing their functions despite it? This becomes tricky in the context of civil society organizations because we have diverse specialized functions and a singular general function. The general function is being a support system for the protection of the natural rights of the public aspect of the government. There are of course countless specialized functions, which in our case is implementing multi-themed integrated development programs to improve indicators of health, livelihood, and Education in our communities.

Reaching out to your target community amidst a pandemic like Covid-19 can get tricky. Social distancing along with the sparseness of the digital medium in a rural community was a hurdle. Here, we found that the administration and local leaders proved key in connecting us to the community. One of my Co-founders being born and raised in this community gave us foundational ground.

Here, we also dealt with the dilemma of whether to enact our responsibilities as citizens and stay put or to get out there and do the work that we do while following all the guidelines put forth by the government. One could say that we had to take a top-down approach when it came to engaging with the community. This wasn’t a situation where we approached the people of the community but a process where we took permission from local administration and leaders who went out of their way to help us. And this was just another refreshing example of the ground reality being quite different from the stereotypical stories of suspicion, scrutiny, and obstruction by the local administration.

Co-creating as co-founders

There were several reasons all of our founding team wasn’t able to get to the ground for the launch. Most of the reasons either were due to the pandemic or made more complex by it. But it was time to act and a few of us decided to be on the field and the rest provided support by working remotely. This led to a deeper understanding and appreciation of all the cogs that move together to get things off the ground and keep them going. We also found innovation in terms of self-governance and delegation mechanisms. This innovation was fueled by the fact that we are what you call a ‘flat’ or ‘self-managed’ organization. Having a governance structure which in most ways is without a traditional hierarchy empowered the entire team to innovate, enroll, and co-lead all the work that we have done so far. I understand that this type of self-governance could be nightmarish for some professionals but given that we all started this organization with some shared values, we found that it created an atmosphere where could innovate and support each other through it all. Of course, this in no way is a stance we are taking.

We are not signaling that we think all organizations to govern themselves like this, it’s just what works best for us right now. We do run into some limitations that such a governance structure would have, but we find that an idea always emerges from amongst us that takes us forward. Now that we are taking volunteers, interns, and change-makers for our Development leaders for India program, it is important for us to encourage them to drive themselves and be as innovative as possible in their contribution. We want to maintain a working environment where even on your first day with us, you feel like you’re working with us, not for us.

Doing and learning by doing

Change-makers having a learning session outdoors

As implementation started catching speed we realized we didn’t have enough people on the ground and the pandemic didn’t help. Funders had wisely diverted their attention entirely to food supply and health-related supply projects. At this point, we remembered something we were taught not long ago, and it was never to have a scarcity mindset. We thought there must be others like us, who don’t want to be sitting home and want to get out to help. This led to the inception of our Development leaders for India program which helped us create a cadre of people who constituted local change-makers and passionate change-makers from other parts of the country. We designed an experience of simultaneous learning and contributing, for our change-makers. We do this by having a mixture of physical sessions in the outdoors and zoom sessions where we invite scholars of the sector to come and donate some knowledge to our organization.

The change-makers/learners also contribute to our on-ground implementation work. And then again, which organization doesn’t struggle with the questions of organizational learning? From the get-go, these questions were of interest to us, and we tried to find, to the best of our capability, the different ways through which we can learn not as students of change but also as a collective.

We found that having a constant influx of new people and ideas is one of the ways to learn. But of course, organizations take more deliberate paths towards organizational learning. This thought has become one of the foundations of our Development leaders for the India program. By facilitating the learning of our change-makers, we are creating a body of knowledge and learning incessantly as an organization.

Biased for action

Thanks to a few of the co-founders there’s always a sense of urgency when we are working and during our meetings. It was unsettling and motivating at the same time. I gave it some thought, why was this strange energy seeping into our conversations? Is it good to have such energy surrounding us at all times? Was it productive or not? To tell you the truth, I am not sure. I think we are moving forward and only time will tell.

When you work towards something you are passionate about, two words start gaining importance; momentum and sustainability. As a young organization, you have to be hungry and intense. But as a social purpose organization, you need to be strategic and patient. You need to think about how you’ll sustain your work, as social issues are too complicated to be mitigated in a short sprint of time. This is a balance we seek to strike as a team. But that strange energy, I never did tell you about its source so let me!

Over time it has become clear to me that today India is a country of youth that is incapable of sitting on the sidelines, as a good chunk of the Indian population suffers from age-old issues of society. This strange energy manifests in our team due to a subconscious voice that realizes there’s a ticking clock of societal and environmental issues. And as youth and social workers, we need to beat this clock.

Hopefully, I speak for the Indian youth when I say that despite rampant joblessness and systemic hurdles, we are all desperate to find avenues to contribute to social change. And we see it as a relentless pursuit. So I urge you to let that strange energy take the better of you. Start your work now because we are running against time. Pandemic or no pandemic, it’s time for innovation, entrepreneurship, compassion, and a bias for action.