Research & Assessment
Needs Assessments
Every community has needs; the hard question is which ones matter most, to whom, and what already exists to meet them. A good needs assessment produces a ranked, evidenced list a funder can act on — and prevents the familiar failure of delivering what was easy instead of what was needed.
How we work
Map what exists before declaring what's missing.
We begin with the service map: schools, sub-centres, anganwadis, water points, roads, schemes already notified for the area — and their real condition, walked and verified, not read off a register. Needs are then established against that map through household data, group discussions and transect walks, and prioritised with the community present.
- Secondary review: census data, scheme coverage, gram panchayat development plans, departmental records
- Service and infrastructure mapping with physical verification and condition scoring
- Household-level data collection on access, usage and unmet demand
- Participatory exercises — transect walks, seasonal calendars, social mapping — done with residents, not about them
- Disaggregation by gender, age, disability and marginalised groups, so averages don't hide exclusion
- Priority-ranking workshops where the community weighs the findings before we write them down
- A needs report with ranked priorities, existing-resource analysis and intervention options costed at order-of-magnitude
Planning an intervention area you don't yet fully know?
Send us the block or panchayat list. We'll propose an assessment sized to the decision it must inform.
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