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Paper short abstract

This paper reflects on facilitating a Community Organising framework with Indigenous youth in the Nilgiris, adapting Marshall Ganz’s People, Power, and Change model to build grassroots leadership, collective agency, and power among tribal youth facing structural exclusion.

Paper long abstract

Drawing on the People, Power, and Change framework developed by Dr. Marshall Ganz, the initiative adapted global movement-based organising practices to a tribal context shaped by historical dispossession, exclusion, and limited power. This paper reflects on my facilitation of Community Organising framework with Indigenous youth in the Nilgiris, framed within ongoing conversations on re-imagining development and shifting power to the grassroots.

As a facilitator from marginalized Dalit community, my positionality became central to the process. Shared socio-political values rooted in anti-caste and movement traditions enabled me to build trust, nurture relationships, and create a learning space grounded in dignity and mutual recognition. Initially, youth were hesitant to speak or claim leadership, reflecting long-standing social marginalization. Through collective reflection, storytelling, relationship-building, and strategic planning, I observed a gradual shift toward confidence, agency, and shared responsibility.

Key outcomes included the emergence of collective leadership, youth-led facilitation of community discussions, and the development of locally grounded campaigns addressing forest rights, housing, and access to public services. Youth began organising teams using shared leadership models and planning strategies rooted in lived realities rather than externally imposed development agendas.

The work, also exposes structural constraints. Continued dependence on donor funding and limited access to resources restrict long-term sustainability. These challenges are intensified by oppressive socio-political structures that systematically marginalise Indigenous communities. Despite these constraints, this case study demonstrates how community organising can function as a decolonial development practice, one that centres political education, relational leadership, and Indigenous youth agency as pathways toward enduring social change.