COMMUNITY ACTION COLLAB & SHILP — STRENGTHENING NETWORKS & COLLECTIVES
Rebuilding 57 Grassroots Organizations Post-COVID

About Community Action Collaborative (CAC)

CAC is a dynamic humanitarian platform that builds the resilience of vulnerable people and their institutions — in everyday emergencies and in preparation for future crises including climate and health shocks. CAC orchestrates and influences the actions of 360+ partners, governments, and alliances — enabling them to solve issues affecting the most vulnerable and ensuring access to critical livelihood, health, social protection, and climate impact solutions.

 

Context

The COVID pandemic brought unprecedented stress and trauma to vulnerable communities and their institutions across India — severely impacting lives and livelihoods. CAC and the MacArthur Foundation came together to respond: to build resilient institutions and leaders from the most marginalized communities, including tribals, those marginalized by profession or location, and those who had migrated and taken up unfamiliar occupations in new contexts.

 

The result was Shilp — Samruddha Sanstha — an institution and leader resilience building initiative spanning 2021–2023. Phicus was brought in as lead design and implementation partner.

 

The Collaboration

Phicus, working alongside CAC, selected 57 community organizations from CAC's pan-India network through a rigorous due diligence process. An institutional baseline was completed for each organization, and a strategic work plan was co-created based on the gaps identified.

 

Monthly capacity building modules were facilitated with the institutions and their leaders — covering critical organizational skills and institutional processes. Seven regional, language-aligned workshops (2 days each) and a market mela for all 57 organizations and their parent NGOs were designed and facilitated — enabling learning, sharing, networking, and business transactions across the network.

 

Shilp Impact

Weak organizations: 35% → 5%

Strong organizations: more than doubled to 47.5%

90% of organizations met their performance goals

62.5% feel highly confident about long-term sustainability

 

Going Forward

Shilp deepened Phicus' understanding of what it takes to build resilience in the smallest, most vulnerable organizations — and became one of the key inspirations for the Roots platform. The journey with these grassroots organizations and communities continues to inform everything Phicus designs.