Catalyzing the Community Growth through Sandbox

To build any vibrant community, it is required to empower the people of that community to become problem solvers. And to strengthen that community, capacity building is required among its people, to adopt and scale the solutions they find for every single problem.

Dr. Desh Deshpande started in India with a similar idea, that led to the formation of the Hubli Sandbox, to serve people of a specific geographical area, especially, tier-2 and tier-3 cities to provide them with a platform to test their ideas and deliver innovative solutions. These solutions can be then replicated across different communities. Sandbox creates an enabling ecosystem that empowers communities to identify every problem as an opportunity to create a solution model and to create an impact on the public at large.

Inspired by the idea of building the community strength to identify and solve the problems, Jayesh Ranjan, IT Secretary of Government of Telangana shared during the Kakatiya Development Dialogue, “The Telangana government will gradually come up with models like the Sandbox to mobilize the community, identify problems and opportunities, play a supporting and catalytic role that the government needs to play. It is a partnership. The government can do certain things, civil society has to do certain things. Governments cannot do things like community mobilization.”

Like Dr. Deshpande says, “Complaints start with They, solutions start with I.” The idea of the Sandbox is to build a community that is driven to take on the challenge of solving the problems, without feeling victimized. The Sandbox works to enable communities to be empowered, to become proactive problem solvers who do not wait for the government or any other organization to intervene.