Thank you for writing to us with your compelling question. We applaud your interest in this important issue and your motivation to take action on it to reduce the problem.
Before responding to your specific questions, there are two questions we’d like to ask you.
The first question is one of time. How much time are you willing to devote to this work? We ask because it would certainly be possible to devote a full professional lifetime to this issue. It doesn’t sound as though you want to do that, but the amount of time you can spend will help determine both your strategy and your results.
The second question is one of geography. Since Kashmir is many hundreds of miles from where you are based in New Delhi, how would an intervention work in practice? Would you propose to direct it remotely? Or do you see your main contribution as simply creating a model for how such an intervention would work?
Putting those issues aside for the moment, and focusing on the three questions you ask:
1. There are principles that apply to interventions in general, whether they be in Kashmiri society, in community psychology, in behavioral science in general, or in group and organizational life, regardless of context or discipline.
More specifically in your case (and in many others). you would want to establish a general goal for your work, and state quite precisely what you would like to accomplish.
You would designate a target area or community where you propose the work would take place.\
And you would make contact with the key stakeholders in your target area or community, to learn about more about their perception of the issue, and about their potential willingness to work together with you and others to reduce the problem. More on this in a moment.
Whether or not you are personally on the scene, it will help to have a core group of people who will be involved in the work. You’d want to draw on them for their ideas, their actions, and also their emotional support as you proceed. You’d want to leverage their talents and abilities to get maximum value from their involvement. Together, you’d want to plan the particular actions you can and should take, depending on your understanding of the needs and resources available. All this will take some time, but it will have been time well spent.
These are basic components of any intervention. They are not fancy, or difficult to grasp. But specifying the details does take thought, and the execution does take work.
2. As for research and intervention models, we are sure there are many. At the risk of self-promotion, we would encourage you to take a look at our own. It is called Our Model of Practice for Community Change and Improvement, and can be found in Chapter 1, Section 3 of the Community Tool Box,
/en/table-of-contents/overview/model-for-community-change-and-improvement/building-capacity/main
3. As for stakeholders, a common starting point is to begin with the major social institutions in your target area. As we are not Kashmiri, you would know these better than we do. But what comes first to our mind are the religious institutions in the area, such as mosques and temples. Also, the educational institutions, in particular colleges and universities. Others might include some people in the business community, the local media, counselors, nonprofits, politicians, and possibly others without any particular affiliation. Others you know personally might also be good sources of recommendation.
If you make contacts, some people you contact will be interested in what you are suggesting, others will not be. That is natural; one would simply work with those who are interested.
(In addition to the thoughts here, we think you might benefit from exploring some of the many other materials in the Community Tool Box -- perhaps especially the different sections in Chapter 19, on Choosing and Adapting Community Interventions, at /en/table-of-contents/analyze/choose-and-adapt-community-interventions.)
We’ll close by offering an idea on one of the many possible directions you could take, keeping in mind this is just our own opinion, and we are outsiders
In your place, we would want to develop an intervention that would have the greatest impact on the greatest number of people. So we would envision some kind of educational program, such as a webinar, or even better a webinar series. or training curriculum, that could attract a significant professional audience. Or perhaps even better, an educational program that could reach a mass audience over their smartphones, that would be lively, catchy, frank, instructive, with some humor and attractive graphics, with real people doing role plays, or animated characters dramatizing the content you want to get across.
We hope some of these thoughts may be helpful to you. Thank you again for writing to us. We hope you will have the chance to implement your ideas, and to make a positive difference in your home community. We wish you the very best in doing so.
