Induction Training Report
MISAAL FELLOWSHIP PROGAMME: YOUTH FOR
INCLUSIVE DEVELOPMENT
Misaal Fellowship: Youth For Inclusive
Development
Supporting young and inspired Muslim activists for rights
and justice of all excluded, and nation-building.
Aman Biradari – Centre for Equity Studies, New Delhi
With
Action Aid India, Lucknow Regional Office
Aman Trust, New Delhi
Al Khair Trust, Patna, Bihar
Hashiya, New Delhi
Hassan Educational & Welfare Trust, Madhubani, Bihar
Social Development Foundation, New Delhi
Misaal Fellowship was launched,
with an induction training
programme for the first batch of 9
Misaal fellows, in Delhi, from 2-6
April, 2015.
A five-day induction training program for the first
batch of Misaal fellows has just concluded
successfully. The induction programme was intended
to launch the Misaal fellowship, and particularly to
provide participants, all Misaal fellows, intensive
training in the range of concepts, laws and schemes,
and procedures and capacities, besides helpful tools
required of activist and grassroots organisations
working for community mobilization and advocacy
for poor Muslims and other excluded groups.
Objectives: These were multiple:
1. To introduce the idea behind the Misaal
Fellowship
2. To introduce themes and concepts relevant to
the working of grassroots organizations.
3. To equip the participants with an understanding
of social justice issues and social security laws,
programs and schemes, besides a familiarization
of skills, capacities and tools required to plan,
implement and manage interventions around
community mobilization and advocacy for rights
of communities that the fellows work with.
4. Expose participants to the work of CBOs working
on similar themes, including an understanding of
the challenges that CBOs face in the areas and
their learnings from the work.
5. Help the fellows prioritise their plans for working
with the community, going forward, and develop
a work plan to guide their work in their particular
contexts.
6. To structure a resource centre for the fellows to
access as handholding support for their work,
including through a mix of physical/face to face
and Internet-based interactions.
The Participants
Participants comprised a group of 9 activists/local
youth leaders, identified as the first batch of Misaal
fellows, drawn from minority concentrated districts
of U.P, Bihar and Delhi. All fellows are either
grassroots workers in their own right, or are
associated with grassroots organizations in various
capacities and working on issues ranging from
education, women’s rights, communal harmony and
film-based activism. Table below (page 4) provides a
snapshot of the fellows, and the context of their
current work.
Sessions and Outcomes
Day 1: Introductory Session
The Misaal Team welcomed the participants and
explained the concept of Misaal Fellowship and
provided an overview of its design and
operationalisation concerns, and discussed the
broader goals of this project. The fellows introduced
themselves and described in detail their main
domain of work, the locale and their target group.
They also shared their expectations form the fiveday engagement and shared specific concerns.
Thematic Session 1: Concepts and Fundamentals
Concepts and fundamentals underpinning Misaal
formed the topics of discussions in the first thematic
session. The first subject of discussion was
Democracy, and its application in the context of
rights and justice for citizens. Leading on from this
discussion was that of the notions of social Justice,
and how that is a core tenet of a democratic state.
The resource person for the session was Manoj Jha,
of Delhi University. Other issues discussed were
Pluralism (facilitated by Harsh Mander, Aman
Biradari) as defined in the Constitutions and ways to
achieve that through social change. The subsequent
session, led by Minority rights activist John Dayal,
sought to connect the theoretical understanding of
Minority Rights with the practical aspects of
leveraging those for the purpose of Social Justice.
The last session of the day, on gender justice, led by
Ghazala Jamil, JNU, sought to provide the fellows an
introduction to gender issues and perspectives.
Day 2: Thematic Session 2 - Legislations and Schemes
The second day was devoted to an introduction to
laws, programmes and schemes of relevance to
minorities, particularly Muslim groups. The first
session, on Laws (civil rights) was led by civil rights
activists, Ravi Nair and Siddharth Sharma. This was
followed by session on cultural personal laws,
facilitated by Tahmina Lashkar of Commonwealth
Human Rights Initiative. Laws were followed by a
rendition of programmes and schemes, generic as
well as Minority / Muslim specific, both led by Jawed
Khan of Centre for Budget and Governance
Accountability (CBGA).
Day 3: Processes, Systems and capacities
The third day was designed to provide participants
an exposure to practical tools and guides for work
planning and implementation of interventions
working with poor communities. The first session, on
need assessment, led by Gaurav Singh of CBGA,
emphasized the participatory manner of identifying
needs. This was followed by discussions on the
importance of planning and identifying resources
available to carry out the selected interventions. For
understanding the application of advocacy with state
and non-state actors for social justice and other
interventions, Akram Akhtar of Afkar India,
illustrated the process followed in advocacy in
Muzafarnagar post-communal violence context.
There was also film shows on relevant themes.
The session on Community mobilization was led by
Madhu Bala and Praveena from Jagori. The following
session, on set up of grassroots organisations, and
the legal and other processes to watch out for was
led by Jamal Kidwai of Aman Trust. The sessions on
documentation and media engagement were led by
by Ghazala Jamil, JNU and Iqbal Ahmed, BBC,
respectively. Whilst the former provided an
understanding of documentation techniques and use
of tools, the latter explained how to take the help of
media as a tool for advocacy and mobilization.
concluded with interaction of the fellows with
Osama Manzar, Digital Empowerment Foundation,
who spoke of the various possibilities to use Internet
for supporting the empowerment of marginalized
communities, and how fellows could make use of the
potentials there.
Day 4: Study trip to Kandhla
A study trip to Kandhla, Shamli district was
conducted to provide the fellows an exposure to the
working of Afkar India Foundation, a grassroots
organization working with victims of communal
violence of 2013, to help them with justice and
peace-building. Afkar was chosen for the study, as
Afkar itself had come up as a grounded grassroots
organisation, due to the concentrated handholding
support provided by a platform of national and state
level civil society organisations and donors, under
the aegis of Muzaffarnagar Adhikar Jan Manch
(MAJMA), led by Aman Biradari. The trip provided
the fellows a fist hand account of the challenges and
possibilities of activism for rights and justice.
Day 5: Work Plan Development
The final day was designed to enable fellows to
reflect on their learnings, and to use those to
develop their individual annual work plans, as guide
for carrying out specific interventions in their
communities. Fellows identified and prioritised a
shortlist of the most appropriate interventions they
wanted to try out on their return to their field; and
an estimation of the resources and challenges
anticipated in implementing those. These were
drawn up as work plans that the later presented
before a panel of experts, comprised of senior
academics, activists, researchers, social enterprise
leaders and business professionals. (Table below)
The last session of the day involved discussions on
art, as tool for mobilizing and communicating with
audiences. The resource persons, Zeba Rizvi of Arpan
and Reena Pathickal led the discussions on using
grass-roots comics for educating communities;
street-art for advocacy; and progressive songs and
poetry alongside visual arts for reaching out to the
target communities, among others. The day
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Fellows’ personalized work plans
Fellow
Location
Anjar
Bhajanpuri
Forbesganj block,
Araria
district,
Bihar
Initiation
Intended are of
work
Activities
1.
Justice
for
frobesganj victims
Legal process, social
justice,
advocacy,
dialogues
Availing food security
schemes
Generating Volunteer
Teachers, looking into
the issues of Drop outs
Generating Livelihood;
Conducting Dialogues
Funds,
volunteers,
computer
internet
2. Food Security
Meraj
Ahmed
Phulwarisharif,
Patna, Bihar
1.
Elementary
Education
2.Women
Empowerment
Resources
Required
Volunteers,
Funds,
Computer
+Internet
Md.
Mahmood
Bhagalpur, Bihar
1.Communal
Harmony
2. Enrolment of
children aged 5-8 in
schools
Dialogues
with
communities
Dialogues with children,
families
Volunteers,
Funds,
Computer
+Internet
Najmul
Hafiz
Kaluahi
block,
Madhubani
district, Bihar
1. Elementary
Education
Formation of Team
comprising of Families
of children + other
stakeholders
Livelihood generation
Funds
Advocacy, legal process
Funds
Financial
Resources,
Stationery,
Volunteers,
Legal aid
2. Education, gender
Justice
(working
with
Muslim
Women)
1.Women
Empowerment
Monthly Meetings with
the community;
Dialogues with the
distributors , organize
camps
Legal: Campaign
Information on law
Social: dialogues with
the women
SHG/Livelihood
generation
2.
Elementary
Education (Muslim
Children/drop-outs)
Dialogues
with
stakeholders, Prabhat
rally campaign
Resources,
volunteers
1.Elementary
Education
Meetings with families
of drop-outs
Computer
Printer Camera
Stationery
Cycle
Salim
Shah Alam
Seelampur, North
East Delhi
Fatehpur Town,
Fatehpur district,
U.P
Kandhla
Shamli
U.P
Auriya
U.P
block,
district,
district,
SURVEY/NEED ASSESSMENT -2 WEEK TO 1 MONTH
Naved
Azam
Rubina
Parveen
2.Women
Empowerment
(Muslim Women )
Legal Justice for
Missing persons
1. Food Security
(PDS)
1.
2. Public Distribution
System
Dialogues with Officials,
generate a group of
volunteers, RTIs
+
Office structure,
Financial
resources
Zuhaib
Khan
Bareilly
U.P
district,
1. Violence
women
against
2. Dalit /Muslim
discrimination
advocacy for activating
women
help-lines;
financial
help
for
women who are victims
Dialogues with various
communities
Financial
resources
legal aid
and
The Way Ahead
The induction training programme proved to be a useful platform for launching the Misaal Fellowship and
equipping the fellows with essential skills to begin planning and implementing practical steps in their particular
communities. The training program also became a space for discussion on the practical aspects of the Misaal
fellowship program, including identifying mentoring plans, resource center set up, mentoring and handholding
visits by Misaal Team for guiding the fellows, facilitating the development of resource material and training
modules for the fellows, as well as development of a website as platform for communicating the Misaal idea to the
wider world, besides a portal, for two-way communication between the National Resource Centre and Fellows.
Going forward, fellows will use their personalized workplans to plan and roll out their preferred interventions,
working with their communities. The National Resource Centre is committing to provide continual handholding
support to the fellows, at every stage of the workplan process, through cross visits to the sites, every 5-6 weeks,
besides online support, using the Misaal website cum portal, now in the process of set up. A first collective reviewcum reflection workshop, brining together all fellows and resource persons, is planned in end-July 15. This process
will be continued into the following months.
Misaal Fellowship Programme: Youth For Inclusive Development
Aman Biradari - Centre for Equity Studies
105/6 A Adhchini, Aurobindo Marg, New Delhi – 110 017
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