Efforts to respond to women’s risk of domestic violence in India have resulted in two kinds of systemic responses. First, the formal or institutional response has focused on systems reforms to better meet the needs of survivors. Second, nongovernmental and grassroots responses to domestic violence have emphasized supporting survivors through survivor-centered and empowerment-based approaches. These include primary prevention through community activism aimed at transforming community norms, survivor empowerment, capacity-building, and community mobilization. This chapter describes an exemplary effort by “Shakti” (pseudonym), a grassroots agency based in India, to engage in community mobilization that facilitates psychological empowerment of survivors and community empowerment processes to respond to domestic violence in rural communities in the Delhi National Capital Region, India. The case example draws on data collected by the authors in 2017. Community organizing efforts like those described in this chapter along with individual-level work with survivors can together play an important role in fueling counter-narratives that facilitate disclosure of violence and support survivors.

The second chapter moves from the learning crisis to IDFI programming in education. Based on the three main donors involved with primary education (World Bank, DFID, and USAID), it examines the process of designing projects in developing countries and the interventions that were financed. Early emphasis was on developing school infrastructure. Initial research, especially the school effectiveness studies, informed donor decisions on the content of their financing of education reform. There is an evolution in IDFI approach with a singular focus on developing infrastructure to a collective construction of a basket of investments for quality education based on best practice. There are commonalities across agencies in the interventions that are financed. Each of the areas contained in this basket are discussed in detail in light of the learning crisis – instructional materials, teacher training, and community mobilization. The chapter concludes by identifying the gaps in programming that have led to the learning crisis. In the final evaluation, the interorganizational reflection and systems learning that would have helped to comprehend and attend to the learning crisis did not happen.

As global health agencies and donors shift their focus away from single-disease responses and towards the broader umbrella of universal health coverage, the advocacy movement that has achieved so much in the HIV response is now beginning to wrestle with finding new ways to reach out to and partner with broader and more diverse constituencies. Where to begin this renewal? The author suggests drawing on the example of the CVC study to expand forms of community mobilization that incorporate data-gathering through participatory action research, bringing together diverse grassroots constituencies to document and understand local needs, and to establish trust with marginalized and hidden communities. Richer data can reveal hidden realities which international organizations need for programming. At the same time, individuals can also use that same data to make institutions visible: their strengths and gaps, their rationales, assumptions and pressures, what the institution thinks counts, and what they may sometimes miss.