Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Children and Youth Services Review

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/childyouth

Participatory youth-led community development: A child-centered visual T

SWOT analysis in India
Siva Mathiyazhagan
Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL), India

A R T I C LE I N FO A B S T R A C T

Keywords: In India, 27.5% of the population is youth in the age group of 15–29 years and 67.5% of the Indian population
Visual SWOT lives in rural and semi-urban areas. Youth civic engagements and youth-led initiatives are crucial for community
PAR development. The purpose of this paper is to examine how well youth-led initiatives are creating a positive
Youth-led impact in the community, as well as how these initiatives are recognized by their own community members and
Child-centered
key stakeholders. This paper describes how youth-led visual technology and media-based community develop-
Community-owned
Development
ment processes transformed a nomadic tribal community in India with a focus on promoting child rights. The
Child project “INaGi: A Child-Centered Visual SWOT” (Ilaingargaludan Nagaramum Giramamum, Tamil for “Youth
India with Urban and Rural Areas”) was executed by Trust for Youth and Child Leadership (TYCL), a youth-led or-
ganization based in Pondicherry, India. The project offered visual technology and media tools to local youth to
capture the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the tribal community and provided space for
them to reflect, connect, and act for mutual social transformation. This process recognizes indigenous knowl-
edge, co-creation, and the power of young people and new age technology, and it enables local people to in-
novate local solutions for local problems. Furthermore, this paper discusses a youth-led bottom-up approach for
the planning and execution of child-centered community development, as particularly distinct from a donor-
driven project approach. Visual-based participatory action research methods were adopted to engage youth,
community members, and other key stakeholders of the project. This paper captures the participatory youth-led
community development process, its positive outcomes, and lessons learned from the process and put forth
recommendations for key stakeholders.

1. Introduction weighing, communication, teamwork, and advocacy (Ozer, 2017). In

India has the largest child population in the world (Ministry of
Women and Child Development, 2013; UNICEF, 2011). Nearly every
fifth child in the world lives in India. More than one-third of the
country’s population, around 472 million, is below 18 years old
(Humanium, 2018). 73% of children in India are living in rural areas. It
is estimated that around 170 million, or 40 percent of, Indian children
are vulnerable to or are experiencing difficult circumstances
(Humanium, 2018; UNICEF, 2011). India is prepared to become the
youngest country in the world by 2020 (Francis, Gross, Quint, & The,
2013). In India, 27.5% of the population is youth in the age group of
15–29 years, and 67.5% of the Indian population lives in rural and
semi-urban areas (The National Youth Policy, 2014).
Youth-led Participatory Action Research (YPAR) is a form of com-
munity-based participatory research in which youth are trained to use a
systematic ecological view to identify and analyze problems relevant to
their lives, and also develop skills in research inquiry, evidence
recent years, youth engagement in community organizing for social
change has drastically grown in India. Young people are well-connected
to each other like never before; they are ready to support and are al-
ready significantly supporting the resilience of their communities; they
are emerging with innovative solutions; and they are leading social
progress and inspiring political change, in urban as well as rural con-
texts (UNITED NATIONS YOUTH STRATEGY 2030, 2018). Youth civic
engagement and youth-led initiatives are crucial for community de-
velopment in India.
Participatory youth-led community development is a unique ap-
proach to bolster co-ownership between local youth and other com-
munity members of their own development (Ho, Clarke, & Dougherty,
2015). The purpose of this paper is to examine how well youth-led
initiatives are creating a positive impact in the community, as well as
how these initiatives are recognized by their own community members
and key stakeholders. This paper describes how youth-led visual tech-
nology and media-based community development processes

E-mail address: dr.siva@tycl.org.in.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104963
Received 14 May 2019; Received in revised form 30 November 2019; Accepted 24 March 2020
Available online 02 April 2020
0190-7409/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
S. Mathiyazhagan
transformed a nomadic tribal community in India with a focus on
promoting child rights. The project “INaGi: A Child-Centered Visual
SWOT” (Ilaingargaludan Nagaramum Giramamum, Tamil for “Youth
with Urban and Rural Areas”) was executed by Trust for Youth and
Child Leadership (TYCL), a youth-led organization based in Pondi-
cherry, India.
This paper highlights the participatory youth-led community de-
velopment process, approach, and outcome, as well as lessons learned
from the process and from the community for further youth-led in-
itiatives. The paper is developed purely on the basis of TYCL’s grass-
roots experience with the INaGi project. This paper provides a critical
learning opportunity to understand the synergies and tensions in how
power structures operate in a youth-led community development pro-
cess. This paper reflects the holistic community development process
through the lens of youth leadership.
2. Literature review
Historical oppression, social inequality, and their root causes across
disciplines have contributed to the need for YPAR as a methodology for
addressing educational injustice (Caraballo, Lozenski, Lyiscott, &
Morrel, 2017). Knight and Watson (2014) use YPAR to improve the
opportunity justice of equitable education among new generation
African immigrants in the U.S. They found that the civic teaching,
learning, and actions occurring within the contexts of families, iden-
tities, and schooling facilitated African immigrant youth's capacity to
define, understand, critically question, engage, and enact conventional
and new forms of civic engagement. Michelle et al. (2018) developed a
pilot study in Kenya by recruiting refugee youth as co-researchers to
identify educational aspirations and outcomes for themselves. They il-
lustrate that critical understanding of local and global educational op-
portunities can empower, rather than demoralize, young people as they
shape their futures in exile. They along with other researchers also
reveal that “co-authorship” remains a fraught issue in YPAR due to the
power dynamic between the adult facilitator and youth co-researchers,
which may transform “co-researchers” into “research subjects (Doria &
Cristy, 2017; Katherine, Gracy, Christoper, Lisa, Hari, & Steve, 2018;
Michelle et al., 2018). Manifestations of child support are often abstract
and decontextualized, and they have limited value when decontextua-
lized from opportunity structures (Michelle et al., 2018).
Akom, Shah, Nakai, and Cruz (2016) developed the concept of
YPAR 2.0 in which new technologies enable young people to visualize,
validate, and transform social inequalities by using local knowledge in
innovative ways that deepen civic engagement, democratize data, ex-
pand educational opportunity, inform policy, and mobilize community
assets. The authors document how digital technology coupled with the
community-based participatory action research to collect and verify
“public” data led to an increase in young people's self-esteem, en-
vironmental stewardship, academic engagement, and youth leadership.
Those young people became connected and committed to the health
and well-being of their neighborhoods.
Mallan (2010) concludes five types of disjuncture between intention
and action. They are institutional (e.g., funding timelines and guide-
lines), generational (e.g., the inevitable mismatch between the world-
views of researcher and researched), ideological (e.g. constructions of
youth and the attribution of labels and young people's own labels and
constructions of themselves), and practical (e.g. negotiating agreed
spaces for young people's exercise of agency within competing condi-
tions for ethical consent from schools, parents, and universities). Future
YPAR should create methods to hedge the negative impact of the dis-
junctures for accountable and sustainable action (Mallan, 2010). Not
only should facilitators realize the challenge for youth to work with
community surveys, Photovoice, and community assessments, but also
they must be sensitive, compassionate, and engaging, as well as men-
tors and tutors for the youth researchers (Doria & Cristy, 2017). Moses,
Anna-Britt, Anna-Karin, Elizabeth, and Suzanne (2017) indicate two
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Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
main issues: the desirability of the PAR approach and the complexity of
stakeholder experiences using it to strengthen health systems. Facil-
itators should have adequate preparation and capacity to manage sta-
keholder expectations to maximize the benefits of the approach (Moses
et al., 2017). Training in cultural competence is crucial, in that it is
relevant to avoiding the inappropriate application of Western models to
other cultural contexts (Zeng & Silverstein, 2011).
YPAR can enhance the validity of the research (Ozer, Wanis, &
Bazell, 2010). It also promotes the psychological autonomy of youth
(Masten & Coatsworth, 1998); the importance of an individual and
collective sense of identity and purpose (Damon, Menon, & Cotton
Bronk, 2003); a sense of social responsibility and service (Youniss &
Yates, 1997); and psychological empowerment, strategic thinking,
healthy behavior, collective efficacy, and perceived control (Ozer &
Douglas, 2013). Research shows the efficacy of YPAR in improving
human rights and enhancing governance (Aritadasa & Mcintyre-mills,
2015), and the opportunity justice of equitable education, health,
quality of life, technology-based social relations, and tackling substance
use disorder (Aritadasa & Mcintyre-mills, 2015; Katherine et al., 2018;
Knight & Watson, 2014; Lee, Lipperman-Kreda, Saephan, & Kirkpatrick,
2012; Mallan, 2010; Michelle et al., 2018; Saville et al., 2018). YPAR
can be found in many disciplines seeking to draw from the critical
knowledge and unique positionality of youth to unearth and imagine
new perspectives. Thus, YPAR tends to saturate areas where the voices
of youth have not historically been privileged (Caraballo et al., 2017).
3. Critical questions
This paper answers the following critical questions for youth-led
participatory approaches in the community development process.
1. To what extent are youth-led approaches tackling generational dif-
ferences and power dynamics in the community?
2. To what extent is the community-based multi-stakeholder approach
useful for youth-led holistic community development?
4. Methodology
The researcher adopted a decolonizing qualitative research metho-
dology to theorize a postcolonial indigenous way of conducting re-
search (Chilisa, 2012). YPAR frameworks are centered in decolonizing
research methodologies (Paris, 2014; Smith, 1999; Tuck & Yang, 2012).
Indigenous and local knowledge have become important in analyzing
the vulnerable situation of indigenous communities. This unique re-
search exploration was committed to a scholarly investigation that
promotes social justice, human rights, and democracy in a people-
centric approach (McMahon, Kenyon, & Carter, 2013). The researcher
used a triangulation strategy to a qualitative approach, Participatory
Action Research (PAR), SWOT analysis, and visual media content
analysis. Such triangulation aims to support the credibility of the study
(Chilisa, 2012) (see Table 1).
Table 1
Summary of respondents and data collection approaches.
Data Source Step 1: SWOT on Paper Step 2: Visual
SWOT
Life Story Focus Group
Interviews Discussions
Children 2 2
Youth 4 1 4
Young Adults 2 2
Parents 4 1 4
Community elders & 1 1 1
Leaders
S. Mathiyazhagan
Fig. 1. INaGi-A Visual SWOT process map used by TYCL.
4.1. Data collection and analysis
The INaGi project consisted of two phases of data collection. Step
one was youth-led SWOT analysis on paper based on indigenous focus-
group discussions (one youth group [15–25 years], one parent group
[25–40 years], and one community elders and leaders group
[45–60 years]), and focused life story interviews (Chilisa, 2012) with
community members across different generations (four youth, four
parents, two young adults, one community leader, and two children).
In step two, the above-listed interviewees were invited to partici-
pate in the Visual SWOT process. Except for one elderly woman, ev-
eryone else agreed to be a part of the visual SWOT. For the purpose of
visual SWOT, the visual media team captured the focused life story
interviews on video. All of the collected data were thematically ana-
lyzed and validated by community experts and the Community Youth
Action Group (CYAG) members. Local youth collectively decided not to
use any software for data analysis to make sure that the analysis re-
mained community-owned, inclusive, and participatory with local
young people.
4.2. Study area and context
The youth-led community development project was initiated with
the Aathiyan Tribal Community (ATC). The INaGi project involved
twenty-two families including 38 children. These families resided under
tarpaulin tent structures on a plot of government-owned land (locally
known as Porambokku in Tamil) along the roadside in Villupuram
district of Tamil Nadu, where they have lived for more than fifteen
years. The local youth recognized that these families did not have any
basic facilities such as access to education, health care, water, sanita-
tion, livelihood, land ownership, or ration cards (family social security
cards for food grains subsistence). The primary income that ATC
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Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
members bring in is earned predominantly through begging practices
that involve parading a decorated holy bull, popularly known as “Boom
Boom Mattukarar” in the local language. Their living structures were
unsafe, and there was no single person from the community who had
completed high school due to a lack of access to education for children.
Half of the community members (mostly girl children and women) were
engaged in begging as an alternative employment option due to a lack
of dignified livelihood opportunities. Children who were able to attend
school faced caste-based discrimination in the classroom. This situation
at the school causes a high rate of school dropout. Alcoholism was
widely spread throughout the community irrespective of age and
gender. ATC members were also continuously threatened and abused by
other dominant communities to the point that their life and citizenship
was being questioned. They had approached government officials for
proper land allocation or legal papers to the current place of residence,
but it had been continuously ignored and denied.
TYCL identified the community during disaster relief activities in
late 2015 following major regional flooding during monsoon rains. At
that time, ATC leaders and youth members approached TYCL for a
tarpaulin to make new tents to cover the damaged huts. In the following
months, TYCL youth volunteers completed a needs assessment using
Participatory Action Research (PAR) with community members and
identified the above-mentioned problems including child labor, child
marriage, and child and family begging on the streets. The community
needs were very clear, but very complex systemic issues were also quite
prevalent in the community. Based on the needs assessment outcomes,
TYCL volunteers developed a child-centered sustainable community
development strategy which includes addressing survival issues, parti-
cipatory community awareness, access to resources, and decentraliza-
tion of power centers for community-owned child development pro-
grams. TYCL introduced the Child-Centred Visual SWOT as a new tool
for participatory community sensitization and mobilization for
S. Mathiyazhagan
advocacy.
4.3. Process of INaGi
INaGi is an acronym for the Tamil words Ilaingargaludan
Nagaramum Giramamum, which mean “Youth with Urban and Rural
Areas.” Every community has its own strengths and opportunities to
tackle issues of its own. Nevertheless, such communities tend to lack
awareness and sensitization to consciously observe and address their
own issues. INaGi aimed to address these gaps in the local communities.
TYCL initiated the child-centered visual SWOT analysis with the sup-
port of local youth to increase the community’s understanding of their
strengths and recover from social challenges on their own.
A group of TYCL youth volunteers along with Aathiyan youth
community members together conducted a visual SWOT of the com-
munity. The following process had been followed carefully by the INaGi
youth team with due ethical consideration (see Fig. 1).
4.3.1. Village visit
In the month of October 2017, TYCL’s INaGi team visited the village
and had a discussion with community leaders, youth, and other key
members of the community. This visit served to collect a basic demo-
graphic profile of the community, identify the youth volunteers from
the community, and understand the dynamics of the community
system. Together, local and TYCL youth volunteers formed an INaGi
youth action team.
4.3.2. SWOT analysis
The INaGi team fixed an appointment with community members in
the month of November 2017 and completed a written SWOT (Strength,
Weakness, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis on paper with com-
munity members. This process allowed the INaGi team to understand
the issues faced by community members in general, and by children and
girls in particular.
4.3.3. Child-centred visual SWOT
The INaGi team received written and oral consent from the people
who were willing to participate in the visual SWOT process. Youth and
community members shared the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities,
and threats of their community in front of the camera, based on the
SWOT on the paper. This visual documentation was edited with the
participation of community experts (local community youth) through
the lens of child-centeredness.
4.3.4. Youth action group and multi-stakeholders
The Community Youth Action Group (CYAG) was set up in the
month of January 2018. They invited all stakeholders of the commu-
nity, including a local school headmaster, service providers, local
NGOs, local political leaders, police officials, and government officials
from land, electricity, and social security departments, to attend a
screening of the visual SWOT held in the community. More than half of
them were present during the screening and community reflection
process.
4.3.5. Community screening
The final version of the visual SWOT was screened in the Aathiyan
community. The collective reflection process was initiated among the
community members and with special invitees and stakeholders.
Community members and CYAG members had an opportunity to in-
teract with officials and stakeholders. In the end, a copy of the visual
SWOT and a contact directory of the key stakeholders were handed over
to the community leaders and the CYAG. The government officials and
other stakeholders immediately committed to supporting the commu-
nity needs promptly. A copy of the visual SWOT is available at https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=VcysUvY46E8.
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Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
4.4. Ethics
For the purpose of the INaGi project, the youth research team fol-
lowed three levels of research and practice ethics with community
members. These can be identified as the following:
1. The researcher and TYCL volunteers made CYAG and other parti-
cipants aware of the objective of the visual SWOT and processes.
The complete process was done in the local language. It was made
clear that the complete process should be transparent and accoun-
table to the community members and validation had to be done by
the community experts.
2. Photo, audio, video oral and written consents were received from all
the participants and community leaders for their voluntary partici-
pation.
3. The final copy of the Visual SWOT and stakeholder’s contact di-
rectory was handed over the CYAG and community leaders as
community advocacy materials and archives of the community.
5. Results
The main aim of this project was to study how the youth-led par-
ticipatory community research model leads to community-owned
youth-led social change using visual media technology (Petrasek
MacDonald, Ford, & Cunsolo Willox, 2015). The Aathiyan community is
one of the most vulnerable and voiceless communities in mainstream
Indian society. They are oppressed by caste, class, and social stigma.
The Visual SWOT analysis identified four major lived-experienced-
based themes as a result of the study. Fig. 2 presents a visual re-
presentation of the Child-Centered SWOT analysis. Four themes have
been ordered and discussed below:
5.1. Power and fear
‘Power and fear’ was the first theme identified from the visual
SWOT and other qualitative enquires with participants. Within so-
called mainstream Indian society, there continue to be strong caste-,
gender-, and class-based power structures, discrimination, and stigma.
Indigenous communities are considered to be at the bottom of the social
hierarchy and the top of the social policy priority. However, the reality
remains different. It deeply affects the children and their right to edu-
cation, protection, participation, and development.
We feel fear of going to school, always treat as differently based on our
caste, at school, there were two separate drinking water pots my com-
munity children and others. -Girl Child Participant
Caste-based discrimination in the school escalates the rate of
dropout and increases the fear and inferiority complex among children
and their parents. Enabling young people to access social welfare sys-
tems, and preparing them to act and follow-up with social welfare of-
ficials can create conflicts with other dominant communities. Dominant
community landowners do not allow Aathiyan community members to
live next to their land just because of their caste and lifestyle. Moreover,
Aathiyan people are quite commonly considered “filthy,” and caste-
based geographical isolations continues to persist all over India. The
complex caste systems create a structural barrier for social cohesion and
social inclusion (see Image 1).
The curious aspect of addressing caste and class in the process of the
INaGi Visual SWOT project is that by engaging local political parties,
they volunteered their support to the community. There had been a few
occasions when the dominant community attempted to abuse and evict
ATC members from that area, but local political party leaders stood
with the community and ensured justice. These are very intermittent
acts from political leaders. There was another occasion on which gov-
ernment officials did not show much interest to meet the CYAG and
ignored the request, but when local print news media covered their
S. Mathiyazhagan
Fig. 2. Visual representation of the Child-Centered SWOT analysis.
voices, it greatly gained the attention of the officials. These events also
helped other community members to understand constraints and chal-
lenges as well as the need for treating them as equals within society. It
is important to engage all mainstream actors and stakeholders in the
development process. While there are disparities existing at various
social service levels, greater success can be made possible through the
socio-behavioral cohesiveness of Aathiyan community members.
Nevertheless, though there is a slight improvement in social acceptance,
the caste and class struggle has not ended.
5.2. Identity and respect
The visual SWOT process identified that identity and respect in the
so-called mainstream society based on employment and community
practice were key results from the participant’s voice. The youth par-
ticipants and community members were well-aware of their weakness
in their employment and traditional practices and their link with
identity and respect. Child marriage and engaging children in begging
were two major issues highlighted in the visual SWOT process, and the
same has been identified as traditional harmful practices that affect
their identity and respect in society.
Image 1. A screenshot of Visual SWOT in the community.
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Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
In our caste, we practice child marriage, most of us are engaged in
begging. We don’t know anything. We never get respect from anyone.
-Community Leader
The longingness for identity and respect were expressed by all the
participants irrespective of their age, gender, and their role in the
community. Lack of social identity documents to access welfare systems
kept them far away from the welfare programs of the Government.
We requested the Government to provide community certificates, land,
social security card but no response. Even trees have some numbers but
we do not have any identity. -Community Leader
The youth research team analyzed self-respect and identity of the
community based on their behavior and practice of how they would like
to present themselves to the outer world to secure respect and inclusion.
The identity of the community is socially well-known as indigenous, but
there were no documents to validate their identity and access welfare
measures. Authorization of the identity documents from the
Government was highlighted by all the respondents. This has raised the
question of citizenship and where the community members belong.
Respect and identity were one of the major themes to bring
S. Mathiyazhagan
stakeholders together to act on community issues.
5.3. Sense of ownership
There was a strong sense of community ownership observed
throughout the research process. Participants mentioned that organi-
zations and political parties come and go but that the community itself
needs to make change happen. During the research process, participants
highlighted that in the past, various non-governmental organizations
(NGOs) and local researchers took photos and videos of the community,
but nothing happened to improve their social situations. After the
government allocated new land to the community as a result of the
visual SWOT, some NGOs tried to claim and take ownership of the
development. However, community members were very clear that it
happened because of their own efforts.
“In the last 13 years, so many people visited us and took photos and
videos of us and our settlements. They also said that they will provide
land and house but they did nothing to us.” -Male youth participant
NGOs may support communities from behind if community mem-
bers request their support and it is required. In this process, TYCL
worked with and supported the YCAG until the screening and net-
working with stakeholders. The community members and YCAG
members later approached TYCL for their further support for children’s
schooling, housing, water, and electricity at the new settlement. It is
this researcher’s strong belief that NGOs should not use communities
for their own project development and the NGO’s survival-livelihood
needs. Instead, they should work to create safe access for the commu-
nity to approach NGOs at any time they are in need and at risk. They
have approached TYCL without any hesitation. NGOs should move
away from the community and development process and alternatively,
strive for a cordial relationship with the community. Quite often, NGOs
takes a lead role in the community development process and keep
community members as a participant. This INaGi process enables
community youth to take the lead and positions NGOs and other sta-
keholders to be participants of the development process. This project
makes it evident that youth-led organizations can shift development
approaches from donor-driven to people-centered.
5.4. Hope for future
The community members, and women, in particular, have a very
strong voice for their ‘aspirations and dreams about their children's
future.’ The community members were ready to act upon their crisis
situation. The child-centered and bottom-up approach through visual
media recognized the historical trauma and oppression undergone by
the community. Youth representatives were keenly interested in ac-
tively engaging in the resilience and rebuilding of their own commu-
nity. Indigenous communities are well experienced in rebuilding and
are naturally resilient in disaster-prone situations. This visual SWOT
allows them to understand their social crises and take strong collective
community action. Every single participant of the visual SWOT ex-
pressed their hope for the future in terms of basic infrastructure facil-
ities, dignity, and respect.
“We have a lot of dreams. We would like to have our own land, elec-
tricity, and for all the children to study well and get into respectable
positions in society” -Female youth participant
“We suffered a lot. No one is educated in my community. This place has
to change. We have a lot of aspirations and dreams in our hearts. We
don’t want our children to undergo the same sufferings as we had. We are
ready to work hard to educate our children and everything has to be
changed. Our children should have a better life.” -Parent
The parents and leaders of the community expressed their aspiration
for their children’s future. Every single participant re-emphasized that
their children shouldn’t suffer what they have undergone in the past
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Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
particularly access to education, health, and dignified employment
opportunities. The sufferings and oppressions should come to an end
with this generation itself.
6. Outcomes and Follow-up
TYCL youth volunteers were regularly in touch with CYAG members
and community leaders to follow up on the community development
initiatives and measure the outcome of the Visual SWOT. The following
outcomes were observed in the community until December 2018.
1. The community leaders and youth members have access to all re-
levant government officials who are responsible for their commu-
nity issues such as the Department of Civil Supplies and the
Department of Land and Electricity. These indigenous communities
have been historically denied access to government officials and
welfare programs. Within the first three months after the screening
with stakeholders, the government issued identity cards to all in-
dividuals and family cards to all families.
2. After the visual SWOT screening, the research team observed that
local youth and community members started discussing their
strengths and opportunities available around them. All the young
people and two-thirds of the other community members were keen
to support the CYAG for further action.
3. All of the parents sent their children to school, instead of for begging
or child labor, despite financial difficulties persisting among the
families. However, caste-based discrimination and peer-bullying
continue in school.
4. The Government of Tamil Nadu allotted land to all the families, and
with support from TYCL, other organizational support, and com-
munity member contributions, twenty-two thatched houses were
built in a dignified settlement for the families on new plots. Now,
every family has their own land and a house to live in. The CYAG
and community local leaders mobilized the resources for their
house.
5. The community members committed to keeping their children in a
safe environment as well as not sending them for begging. In addi-
tion, there was no child marriage reported in the community during
the intervention period.
7. Discussion
The Participatory Youth-Led Community Development (PYCD)
model of INaGi complements Bronfenbrenner’s ecological system
theory and Gal's Ecological Model of Participation, and it is evident that
all outcomes of PYCD for local youth, children, family, and commu-
nities are linked. Young people who are sensitized to social justice is-
sues, have a positive relationship with family and adults, and feel a
sense of belonging to their community are more likely to show prosocial
behavior and to become potential agents of change (Doria & Cristy,
2017). Ozer and Douglas (2013) explored that youth and children
participate in research to make them create positive changes in their
school and community. In addition, multiple other researchers found
that engagement of young people in the participatory research process
has a long-term outcome on their prosocial skills, impacts future edu-
cation and employment, and promotes positive relationships with
adults and community members (Doria & Cristy, 2017; Jones,
Greenberg, & Crowley, 2015; Kim, 2013). Engaging young people in the
visual media-based PYCD builds confidence, promotes prosocial beha-
vior with adults, and promotes them as emerging leaders of the com-
munity and beyond.
The visual media and technological tools enhance the level of par-
ticipation and create an opportunity to showcase youth skills and
creativity for their own community development. This youth-led visual
media-based participatory action research approach may address the
generational gap and complement the adult experience. Teixeira and
S. Mathiyazhagan
Gardner (2017) highlighted how visual media can be used in the form
of participatory photo mapping (PPM) models for neighborhood en-
vironment analysis to understand neighborhood issues. The Indian so-
cial system is very complex and hard to understand with multi-level
social hierarchies. This unique visual-based approach promotes local
youth-led community action to transform the lives of indigenous people
and create a stronger social support system.
Social science research outcomes are often not disseminated to
community members. Using visual media as a tool for Youth-led
Participatory Action Research allows the whole community to witness
the outcome visually and sensitize them with reflection questions
(Petrasek MacDonald et al., 2015; Teixeira & Gardner, 2017). It pro-
vides an opportunity for the community to revalidate and critically
reflect on and question their local situation and encourages them to find
their own role in the community development process. Watching
themselves on the screen provides both feelings of excitement and so-
cial recognition to research participants and their family members.
Other research studies have also argued that the visual media of sen-
sitization is more effective than other approaches (Petrasek MacDonald
et al., 2015; Teixeira & Gardner, 2017).
Too often, in community decision-making and community devel-
opment, youth voices are neglected and ignored. The most important
decision-making power typically lays with a community leader.
Moreover, it is often difficult to break the indigenous power structure.
In this Aathiyan community, the current community leader, however,
had consciously been taking participatory decisions on matters relating
to community development and legal matters with the government due
to the significant contributions of young people in the process. This
situation had created space for youth to be involved in the larger de-
cision-making process (Blanchet-Cohen, Hart, & Cook, 2009; Blanchet-
Cohen, Manolson, & Shaw, 2014). Another important observation made
by the research team during this process was that community youth
made conscious efforts to include women and community leaders in the
conversation and valued their inputs. This was one of the key learnings
for intergenerational communication for the youth decision-making
process (Blanchet-Cohen et al., 2009). YPAR serves as a potential model
to promote social inclusion within the community.
7.1. Multi-stakeholders engagement
Moses et al. (2017) found that stakeholder involvement promoted
their participation, local ownership, and accountability. Multi-stake-
holder engagement in the participatory youth-led community devel-
opment process enhanced the sense of responsibilities and active re-
lationship with the community. The immediate outcome of INaGi was
observed as positive indicators for active engagement and ownership of
stakeholders. The involvement of multiple stakeholders at different
levels of the community gained innovative ideas, experiences, and re-
sources that facilitated the community development process with young
people in the community (Moses et al., 2017). The uniqueness of this
project is its bottom-up community development approach. The
bottom-up Youth-Led Community Action Group (YCAG) took the lead
and communicated with the social welfare system for their own com-
munity development. The multi-stakeholder engagement enhanced the
systemic response to the community needs and promoted holistic
community development.
8. Challenges and lessons
As an early-stage participatory action researcher, it was an illumi-
nating learning experience for academic as well as for the youth-led
community development initiatives. I have highlighted some of the
challenges and lessons learned from the INaGi project.
7
Children and Youth Services Review 113 (2020) 104963
8.1. Resource and time constraints
TYCL is a youth-led volunteer-run organization. This posed a chal-
lenge in that volunteers were available only in the evenings and on
weekends. This situation caused a mismatch of time availability of
volunteers and community members. Due to the volunteer’s time con-
straints, the project was delayed in its proceedings. Additionally, this
project was conceptualized and initiated without any financial support.
During the process of the Visual SWOT, limited resources were mobi-
lized from local organizations. Due to limited resources, TYCL was
unable to compensate participants and youth volunteers for their time.
It was a very challenging situation, and it is not advisable for youth-led
organizations to experiment without resources. It is difficult for youth-
led organizations to raise funds locally to experiment with community
development models, especially in India where there is a high rate of
donor-driven projects funded by international NGOs and philan-
thropists from Western countries.
8.2. Risk of political parties engagement
When political parties volunteer to support community members in
navigating social welfare measures and processes with government of-
ficials, political parties tend to manipulate them within their political
ideologies and campaigns without the community’s proper under-
standing and awareness. There is a clear need for the socio-political
awareness to be imparted with community members, especially the
CYAG during the visual SWOT process. Pre-induction to the visual
SWOT process for the youth volunteers and research team helps to
mitigate the potential for risks in the community. When volunteers are
inducted with TYCL’s Ecosystem-Based Leadership Program, the youth
are better positioned to understand the dynamics of the political si-
tuation and governance system in the region which allows the team to
address political officials efficiently. This was one of the key learnings
for a youth-led organization. When researchers and NGOs adopt a
youth-led bottom-up approach with vulnerable communities, we en-
sured that we are enabling them to participate and that we are not using
them to generate project outcomes.
8.3. Interdisciplinary skills
The researcher realized that interdisciplinary research and practice
are essential to work with young people using social work methods.
Moreover, social workers need to engage in technological, media,
management research, and innovations to accelerate the impact in the
community. It was a great advantage that the research process and
practice with community members were carried out simultaneously, as
it builds trust as well as helped the researcher learn more about each
family without any hesitation from the community. The project was a
very time-consuming process and required multi-disciplinary skills to
work with different technicians to realize the full project.
9. Conclusion
It may be easy to find a house without a toilet in India but it’s very
hard to find a house without a television or mobile phone. INaGi is the
first-ever youth-led visual-technology-based community engagement
initiative in India. This is a unique fusion of participatory action re-
search and management tools with visual media. This process helps
community members to understand their issues in their own voice and
enable them to be active messengers and change-makers of society.
INaGi was a creative tool to build a powerful community through
youth-led community development in a co-creative approach.
People-centered and youth-led video-based approaches may be
more effective when working with vulnerable communities. INaGi
serves as a community archive for future work in the community and it
is very much available for anyone in the community to access. INaGi is
S. Mathiyazhagan
a co-creative mutual learning opportunity for the organization as well
as community members. It may also serve as a scalable, replicable,
community-based intervention model to stimulate the inner capacities
of oppressed and disadvantaged communities to take action against
injustice within their communities in a structured and systematic ap-
proach. When people address children’s issues at the community level
and ensure child-friendly communities, it will become a friendly com-
munity for all. For future research and practice, researchers may use
emerging technologies like virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR),
or extended reality (XR) to do a visual SWOT in the communities with
young people. Child-centered visual SWOTs may be a potential model
to experiment in other parts of the world to initiate youth action at the
community level. Gandhi’s oft-repeated quote, “be the change you wish
to see in the world,” can be realized through INaGi if key decision-
makers and policy-makers believe in youth action, consciousness, and
co-creation for self-sustainability. Local Action! Global Change!
CRediT authorship contribution statement
Siva Mathiyazhagan: Conceptualization, Methodology, Funding
acquisition, Investigation, Project administration, Data curation,
Formal analysis, Validation, Writing - original draft.
Declaration of Competing Interest
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to
the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Acknowledgement
This paper dedicated to Aathiyan Tribal Community in Villupuram
district of Tamil Nadu. The author also conveys his sincere gratitude to
all the Aathiyan Tribal Community members for their indigenous
knowledge, time and support for this project.
Funding
The author disclosed receipt of the following financial support for
the INaGi research Project: I would like to acknowledge the Sri
Aurobindo Society-Pondicherry, India for financial support.
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