Prabhat Education foundation

Intention of the Case Study

The objective of this study is to understand the functioning of a system with respect to the user as well as the collaborators who come together to enable its smooth functioning and contribute to deliver the desirable outcomes.

Selection of Case Study Topic

Education for children was found to be an area which had a lot of inequalities in different ways. Focusing on the different target segments, i.e., the underprivileged, differently-abled and the school-going regular children. we thought that the differently-abled segment is a highly challenging domain and we could contribute to it in some way. Out of a few organizations that work for the differently-abled, Prabhat Education Foundation seemed to dedicate itself completely to the service of the physically as well mentally disabled children and adults. Hence, we took up this organization for our case study.

• Founded in: 2003
• Mission: To build the capacities of people with special needs to live with dignity and hope as productive and confident citizens
• The journey started through identifying and nurturing of children with learning disabilities, located in some of Ahmedabad’s most difficult localities. As the wide spread reality of physically and mentally challenged children became apparent, Prabhat commenced centres located especially located to facilitate access by special children as well as their families affected by poverty, stigma, ignorance and denial.

We paid a visit to Prabhat foundation thrice. In the first visit, we tried to develop an understanding of the basic structure of the organization, their stakeholders, and how they function. The second visit was more about practically witnessing their services on the field which gave us a better insight about the customer journey and their point of view. After the third visit, three core values of Prabhat were identified by us, along with the Stakeholder map and the Customer Journey Map.

Core Values

Stakeholder Mapping

Final Stakeholder Mapping

Observations, Challenges and Opportunities

• We chose Prabhat Foundation for our Case Study because it is a well established organisation with multiple branches and would serve as a befitting example for its organisational structure to be studied.
• It was imperative for us to have a discussion with their team and staff before sketching out the stakeholder mapping because they follow a system hierarchy that nobody is aware of and neither is it on their website.
• We realised during discussions that the internal structure of Prabhat was not clear to them and so, our mapping was a step towards establishing the flow of their organisation, which came of help to them.
• The challenges faced by our team include differences in understanding the work flow, getting the staff to talk about their roles and responsibilities as they were a little too reserved, and also making them wait so that we could have discussions with them when it was way past their work time.
• Nevertheless, everyone was very cooperative and supportive of what we wanted to achieve, and we were glad to be able to help them.

Service Receiver Journey Map

Final Journey Map

Observations, Challenges and Opportunities

• To be able to understand the journey of the service receiver at Prabhat, we met with several families having their child enrolled in the organisation. In one scenario, there is Community-based rehab where rehabilitation happens in the home environment and we were there to observe it in two homes. Another scenario is of Centre-based rehab which was also observed by us in its setting.
• We observed that every special child has one or the other skill in them which, if honed, can help them lead a good life. Prabhat is a means to help identify those skills or interests that a child could be passionate about and then train them accordingly.
• It is beneficial for families having a child with special needs to enroll in an organisation for such children because it provides the children with a better quality of life, helps parents and siblings in their responsibility, and also helps in providing a disability certificate that can help the special child avail privileges and benefits in the future.
• One of the challenges faced by our team while approaching affected families was to be able to make them talk about the situation of their child, how they really feel about it, and how hopeful they are for their improvement.
• The Director of Prabhat Foundation, Mr. Keshav Chatterjee, gave us insights about how people in the neighbourhood of their centres are sometimes prejudiced against these children and consider them impure, which is a shame.
• However, Keshav ji is happy and determined to help these children against all odds and is feels honoured to be able to contribute to such a cause.

Service Blue Print

Observations, Challenges and Opportunities

• At Prabhat Foundation, there are cross-functional roles and responsibilities which made it challenging to identify the front end as well as the back end staff.
• Since they are an NGO, they are heavily dependent on donations and fundraising events, which does not ensure a smooth flow of funds. Therefore, there a number of services to support their cause and functioning.
• It was only after mapping out all their stakeholders and understanding the service-receiver's journey that we were able to come up with the Service Blueprint for Prabhat.
• The kind of work that the staff at Prabhat does is mostly passion-driven. They go out of their way to make a difference in the lives of children with special needs.
• The Service Blueprint was made by our team without much consultation with the organisation because it was mostly for our own understanding, and as mentioned before, the work here is all cross-functional.

Aboli Deshmukh

Archana Vishwanath

Vanshikaa Sangal