Building
Leaders
From Within
Capacity building at DEVISE is not a workshop. It is a years-long investment in community members — turning participants into advocates, learners into trainers, and residents into people who hold power to account.
Capacity
Building?
For communities that have been systematically excluded, knowledge is not supplementary — it is the precondition for every other right. DEVISE builds capacity so that communities don't just receive help, but develop the ability to seek, demand, and hold onto what is already theirs. The goal is full independence: youth groups that can raise funds, lead advocacy, and guide their own communities without external facilitation.
Flagship Initiative
The Sayukti
Fellowship
The Sayukti Fellowship was DEVISE's pilot initiative for developing grassroots leadership — the programme through which DEVISE first created a sustained presence among the Musahar community in Patna. It was not a top-down training; it was a process of participatory co-design where community members shaped the work as much as they participated in it.
Over time, fellows like Anita Kumari and Shailendra Kumar moved from participants to full programme leads. Anita managed the Anjani centre as Field Manager before going on maternity leave. Shailendra, now Programme Lead, drives all documentation work across five centres — navigating bureaucratic resistance with skill that no external hire could replicate.
This is the proof of capacity building: not training people in skills, but creating conditions for leadership to emerge organically from communities that have rarely been given that space.
The Sayukti Fellowship created a space for DEVISE amongst the Musahar of Patna. Over time, we developed a closer understanding of problems and how they are connected. This helped us develop our interventions organically.
Community Changemakers
Three Stages
of Growth
Each stage builds on the last — moving from foundational skills toward independent leadership capable of national-level advocacy.
Skill Building
Capacity Building
Skill Building
Capacity Building
Skill Building
Capacity Building
Beyond Training
Capacity Builds
Through Culture Too
On 11 February 2026, children from all five centres came together for the first inter-centre sports event — cricket, kabaddi, lemon-and-spoon, sack race, skipping. More than recreation, it built collective identity and demonstrated to children that they belong to a large, capable peer group.
The SIR of electoral rolls in July 2025 was an extreme stress test for the youth leaders. They guided the community to properly fill in their forms and attach the correct documents. Continuous exposure to government documentation as a part of their work with DEVISE had built their capacity to take this challenge head on.
The most elaborate commemorative event of the year — featuring street plays on Savitribai Phule's struggles against caste and gender discrimination, along with collective cooking and community meals. Performance as capacity: children and youth articulating history through their own voices.
Through Pratham Education's Donate-a-Book programme, 145 storybooks worth Rs. 23,850 reached the five learning centres — building a reading culture and expanding children's imagination. Literacy as the foundation of all future advocacy.
The Road Ahead
Long-Term Goals
for Independent Youth Leadership
–27
–28
–29
–31
–32
Invest in
People, Not
Projects
Capacity building is DEVISE's longest game. It does not produce quick wins. It produces Shailendras and Anitas — people who step out of marginalised communities and into positions of genuine leadership. Your support — as a subscriber or donor — funds the time it takes to build that kind of change.