Dalberg enriches social development offering with CORO partnership
Indian community development non-profit CORO has agreed a partnership with Dalberg, one of the world’s leading consultancies for economic development planning and social impact.
The partnership sees two very different companies come together in India with the aim of improving they services they offer to their clients – and ultimately at better shaping policies for communities across the country. “This partnership dissolves the boundaries between the people conducting research and the people being researched – it will prove transformative for the sector,” said Gaurav Gupta, Asia Regional Director at Dalberg.
Founded in the US in 2001, Dalberg is a global consulting firm (30 locations worldwide) specialised in policy advisory and implementation, with a focus on helping governments, development institutions, companies, foundations on making a social impact. In India, Dalberg operates with two offices, based in Mumbai and New Delhi.
CORO was formed over thirty years ago with the aim of propagating adult literacy in the slums of Mumbai, but has over this period grown into one of the country’s largest NGO’s focused on facilitating change from within India's most marginalised and oppressed communities. By training and coaching local leaders, CORO empowers communities to drive their own solutions to their social issues.
Key topics the organisation addresses include: empowering women, defending the rights of the marginalised, improving lives of the underserved, and engaging youth.
Leveraging CORO’s deep knowledge at a “grassroots level”, Dalberg will as part of the collaboration be able to enrich its consulting services and research to the development sector by “better integrating the voice of communities into our work,” said Gupta.
“This partnership dramatically widens our aperture. The advice we give to clients will now benefit from our consultants’ ability to pick up the phone and test ideas easily and speedily with CORO’s network of leaders. These leaders are fighting daily for the very same outcomes we are often designing for. It is time to combine forces,” he said.
Meanwhile, in return, Dalberg will support CORO’s ongoing strategy and learning agenda, helping the organisation scale up its grassroots leadership development work. Sujata Khandekar, founder and director of CORO, stated, “We hope to jointly develop a model of equity-based participatory research with the aim to overturn how social development is typically viewed as a top-down process and to meaningfully collaborate for societal change.”
