About Vikas Samvad

• With its mission mode pursuit at the ground level, it established its identity as a bridge between the government and the society/community at large.
• The range and scale of its operations took a quantum leap wherein the process of communication was centre-staged in building and sustaining credible advocacy on Right to Food, Right to Work and Inter-Sector Convergence in government.
• Thrust on extension with community-based interventions.
• The process-documentation took its roots marked by high expectancy.

The period of 2010-2015 may be termed the evolving years for Vikas Samvad. This has been marked by:

• Community-based model. Building on interventions for maternal wellbeing and child survival and development evolved as a significant way forward.
• Capacity building of community groups of children, women, youth, and adolescents as a novel approach.
• Development of easy-to-comprehend and use knowledge products supported with hands-on research and analytics for evidence building.
• Rendering deeper insights into public spending on nutrition and health.
• Commenced media fellowships on contemporary social development issues.
• Instituted innovations like Poshan Samvad (Nutrition Dialogue) whereby all concerned stakeholders were brought together for a collective insight and sharing of ideas, expectations, information and experiences.

Notably, Vikas Samvad sees its period of 2016 onwards as that of its continued deepened identity for itself. It is manifested in the following:

• Extensive accent on outcomes in relation to input-based activities and outputs. For example, work on implementation of National Food Security Act 2013 got Vikas Samvad engaged on the enabling processes of Social Audit, and Public Hearings at the Panchayat levels.
• Rendering crucial data and analytics from the value and evidence-based perspectives to a host of key stakeholders. 
• Extended and expanded pursuit with stronger ties with the government institutions.
• Marked emphasis placed on the organisation’s work and its relationship with its mandate – purpose for its existence, objectives, vision and mission, and objectives as enshrined in its Memorandum of Association.
• The lens of community and community-based workers showed up the contours of emerging Stories of Change.
• We recognise that we must play the role of a navigator so that the civil society community can effectively act as an Effective Ecosystem Enabler.
• Our reflections have led us to contemplate on our perspective, our own governance, the way we go about our work, and financial resilience as part of ways and means to set out our Institutional Strengthening process apart from the Strategic Communication approach in delivering the navigational role across the canvas of our stakeholders.

Its operational framework comprises 5 thematic domains. These are Food and Nutrition Security and Community Health, Empowering the CSOs (CSOs vis-à-vis efficacy in Strategic Communication), Constitutional Values and their Reflections in Practice, Youth and Adolescent Development and Knowledge Management (Catalyzing Actions and Informed Insights and Experiences).

Whilst working on the issue of Food and Nutrition Security, VSS has enabled about 10000 children to come out of malnutrition through its community-embedded model. Notably, it draws upon the UNICEF’s Framework of Determinants of Maternal and Child Malnutrition. These determinants are Immediate, Underlying, and the Enabling ones.Notably,the enabling ones place an accent on governancereferring to the political, financial, social and public and private sector actions to enable children’s and women’s right to nutrition, sufficiency of resourcesneeded to enable children’s and women’s right to nutrition; and positive norms implying gender, cultural and social norms and actions needed to enable children’s and women’s right to nutrition.