| Navam |

Navam believes that there are many young committed and dedicated social workers and leaders in the social development sector. During our initial outreach activities we came across many such social entrepreneurs. Many of them did not have the adequate exposure nor had the access to current information. We realised the importance of improving their potentials and helping them to bring about revolution in the sector of social development. After interacting with some of them we realised that they too were looking for opportunities of interacting with experts and were eager to share their experiences. This led to the conception of ‘Thingi’ project. These social entrepreneurs have a spark in them. They have an ability to bring about social change, therefore we refer to them as Sparks and the project is called “ Grooming Sparks “ or “Thingi” in Marathi. There was a lot of enthusiasm when we shared our idea of ‘Grooming Sparks’ with them and with many others engaged in this sector. Similarly we shared our views and concerns with the experts and knowledgeable people in this field. They too met with an equal enthusiasm and agreed to share their expertise during the course of this project.

The selected person must be willing to commit for the time duration of the project (at least 3 days a month throughout the year). This is necessary for the continuation of the process. The selected person has the responsibility to share his learnings and experiences of the workshops with all the staff members from their organisation.

The ‘Grooming Spark’s participants come from different parts of rural Maharashtra. They all are decision makers or founders of that NGO, and are also engaged in interacting with the local communities. They all work in the areas of health, education, socio-economic development and income generation activities for the rural population, public advocacy initiatives, legal literacy programmes, etc. The experience of participants range from 5 to 10 years in the social sector.

Process:
The duration of the Grooming Sparks’ project for one batch of participants is one year. The project involves interactions of the selected participants who prefer to call themselves ‘SPARKS’ with the experts from different development sectors like law, education, agriculture, human rights, economics, politics, sociology, medicine, public advocacy, etc. In addition to this they also get exposure by visiting different innovative experimental projects. The participants are provided with the information relating to the government policies, development philosophies, global trends and their impact on people.

The sessions are designed in such a way that everyone benefits from this process. The participants have expressed that this exposure has broadened their vision and enriched their perspective. This process has helped Navam in building a strong network of rural NGOs.

Expected outcome:
It is expected that the participants would like to introduce innovations in their existing activities. Navam would review these projects and would support them, provided they falls within the general frame of operations of Navam

The first and second batch of Grooming Sparks had 8 participants each. Both the batches have completed their training. Training of the third batch is in process and it has 10 participants.