Caritas India Trains Partner Organisations in Evidence Based Project Proposal Writing

Some of the strongest community projects never get built, not for lack of need or lack of will, but because the proposal asking for funds never made the case convincingly enough. It is a quiet failure that repeats across the development sector every year, and it was precisely this gap that Caritas India set out to close with a three day workshop held from 15 to 17 September 2026 at Janvikas Society, Palda, Indore.

Twenty nine participants took part, including four who travelled from Sri Lanka, a reminder that the challenge of turning good work into fundable proposals is not confined to any one country. The Project Proposal Writing Skills workshop was coordinated by Dr Haridas V. R. and facilitated by Dr Saju M. K., Project Manager at Caritas India, with Fr Shinoj, Director of Janvikas Society, welcoming participants as host. Over three days, sessions combined conceptual inputs with practical exercises, group work, discussions, demonstrations, and feedback, all aimed at producing proposals that are clear, evidence based, and results oriented.

Human judgement first, technology second

Opening the workshop, Dr Saju set an expectation that shaped everything that followed: the sessions would offer methodological solutions, not shortcuts. That distinction became especially relevant in a session on Artificial Intelligence and Human Intelligence in proposal writing. Participants were encouraged to think through a proposal fully with their own judgement and understanding of the community before turning to AI, and to use it, when they did, for narrower tasks such as editing and tightening a draft rather than shaping the thinking behind it. Later in the workshop, Dr Saju demonstrated how AI tools could help visualise a problem tree, convert it into an objective tree, and even draft an impact statement, giving participants a practical sense of where the technology could support, and where it could not substitute for, their own analysis of the community.

The workshop also spent time on the practical realities of funding. Participants were walked through the importance of staying current on funding opportunities, including from the European Union, and were advised to regularly visit donor websites, check how a call for proposals aligns with their organisation’s own strategic plan and programmes, and read eligibility criteria closely before applying. A related discussion emphasised something easy to overlook, that an NGO’s own visibility, through an updated website and active social media presence including LinkedIn, often shapes how seriously a donor takes an application before a single proposal is even read.

From theory to a shared exercise

To ground the concepts, participants were divided into four groups and asked to develop a proposal around a single shared theme, livelihood insecurity. The exercise required each group to work through four steps in sequence: identifying the geography of their proposed project, identifying its demography, and then conducting both macro level and micro level analysis of the problem. Dr Saju moved between the groups throughout, reviewing their progress and offering feedback and corrections as the proposals took shape, a method that let participants apply each concept to their own project almost as soon as they learned it.

The second day opened with a session led by Dr Haridas V. R. on Result Based Management, introducing the three level result framework of Output, Outcome, and Impact, alongside a set of approaches to community development including People Led Development, People Led Empowerment, Asset Based Community Development, and Community Managed Practices. The throughline across these frameworks was a shift in emphasis, from projects in which communities are merely involved to projects communities themselves come to manage.

Dr Saju then returned to deepen the technical grounding, walking participants through Problem Tree Analysis, in which root causes form the roots of a tree, the central problem forms its stem, and effects branch out above, and its counterpart, Objective Tree Analysis, which converts the same structure into positive statements of change. The four groups built their own problem and objective trees around livelihood insecurity, using AI tools to help represent them visually. From there, the workshop moved into the Logical Framework Matrix, results defined as intended and verifiable positive change, and the distinction between quantitative results, which carry definite measurements, and qualitative results, which capture shifts in attitudes, capacities, and effectiveness. Participants practised writing SMART results, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time bound, and were told candidly that an outcome need not be perfectly SMART so long as the outputs beneath it are. Sessions on indicators, sources of verification, risks, and assumptions followed, with one piece of advice participants were likely to remember: avoid what Dr Saju called killer assumptions, the kind of unstated condition that can quietly doom a project if it fails to hold.

Sustainability, budgets, and a moment to breathe

After a midday break that included a short yoga demonstration led by Dr Haridas, participants returned to work on their Logical Framework Analysis and moved into sessions on methodology, sustainability, and risk management, covering community ownership, institutional structures, financial sustainability, capacity transfer, and community owned approaches to managing risk. The workshop then introduced the Theory of Change as an illustrated narrative of how a project’s activities lead to impact, followed by sessions on identifying and sequencing project activities and on budgeting. Here too the emphasis was on discipline over convenience, zero based budgeting, in which every cost must be justified, tied to a specific activity, and aligned with the results the project promises to deliver.

What participants took away

The workshop closed with a doubt clearing session and a round of feedback in which participants reflected on both the content and the experience. Many described the sessions as more engaging and practical than other proposal writing workshops they had previously attended, and pointed specifically to Dr Saju’s interactive style, attentiveness, and constructive feedback to each group. Dr Haridas drew appreciation for his approachability and the personal attention he gave participants throughout, while Fr Shinoj and the Janvikas Society team were thanked for hospitality that made a demanding three days feel manageable.

For a sector where the distance between a community’s real needs and a funder’s expectations often decides whether a project happens at all, workshops like this one do quiet but consequential work. Participants left with a structured, practical grasp of how to move from situational analysis and problem identification through result based planning, indicators, logical frameworks, sustainability, and budgeting, and with greater confidence that the next proposal they write will be one that gets read all the way through.