Mapping and Building Capabilities
ABOUT PANI
People’s Action for National Integration – ‘PANI’, is a social development organization working in underdeveloped regions of Uttar Pradesh in India over 32 years to create positive and enduring change in the lives of communities living in abject poverty and undue inequality. PANI implements well contemplated and intended programmes in Child Development, Health, Nutrition & WASH, Sustainable Livelihoods, Gender and Governance, Natural Resource Management and Climate Change areas. The core of the program implementation lies in community action and empowerment of the communities.
CONTEXT FOR THE PHICUS ENGAGEMENT
PANI is in the process of curating solutions designed for scale that could mitigate water related risks (through improved access or lower cost) for small farmers, significantly reduce water consumed in agriculture and deliver remunerative returns to farmers in diverse agro-climatic zones of India. They envision the farmers in the community playing a big role in creating sustainable farming and water related practices.
Phicus was invited to work with the PANI team to support them in understanding capabilities required across their flagship program, including Community Resources Persons and support in building those capabilities. Over several phases of work, Phicus has contributed to building the capacities of the Community Resource Persons (CRPs), Field Officers who work closely with the CRPs, and the program staff from managers to senior leaders.
THE COLLABORATION
In Phase 1 of our work, we spent significant time understanding the persona of a CRP which led to creating a skills map for the role. We created a recruitment and selection process, performance management system, skills assessment process as well as capability building plan. These processes were implemented by the internal program teams.
In Phase 2 of our work, Phicus was involved in creating a persona and a ‘success profile’ (skills, attributes, knowledge mapping) for all the roles in the program team, starting from the Field Officer to Program Director. The methodology used were behavioural interviews and focus group discussions with various role holders across the program. In-depth conversations with the leadership team, led to creation of a detailed capacity building plan for the year.
Phase 3 saw the year-long implementation of the Capacity Building plan across Field Teams, the Block teams and the district teams. ‘Sahuri’, an agency building mascot (through engaging letters) was the delivery channel to build the capacities of the field officers and workshops around key skills such as Being a leader, Presentation skills, Managing Performance, Coaching, Feedback skills and Working Together were areas in which skills were built for the block and district team managers and leaders.
GOING FORWARD
Phicus continues to engage with PANI on a need basis, to support their efforts in building strong programs and effective people managers and leaders.
