Data for Social Change

21–25 February 2026

Background

Data increasingly shapes how the world around us is designed and how its stories are told. For those working across welfare and public policy, government dashboards, surveys, and media reports are part of everyday practice. Yet, in the absence of the knowledge, skills, and critical orientation required to engage with this information, data often circulates as neutral fact—even when it reflects political choices, exclusions, and power relations. Engagement with data, therefore, is not optional.

Data for Social Change is a hands-on, introductory workshop that demystifies data and positions it as a practical and political tool for accountability, advocacy, and community action. The workshop focuses on building confidence to read, question, collect, analyse, and communicate data using accessible tools, public datasets, and real-world issues.

Learning Objectives

The workshop aims to enable participants to meaningfully engage with data in their work by building foundational knowledge, practical skills, and critical attitudes.

Knowledge (What participants will understand)

Participants will gain an understanding of:

The data ecosystem and lifecycle, and how data is produced, collected, analyzed, interpreted, communicated, and used in decision-making.
Who produces and uses data (government, corporations, media, civil society), and how interests shape what data highlights, obscures, or excludes?
Core concepts of data literacy and numeracy, including how to read reports, interpret claims, and recognize misrepresentation or selective use of numbers.
Key sources of public and administrative data in India including government datasets, RTI, NREGA, health, welfare, environmental, and corporate data (such as MCA records).
The role of data in public health, labour, welfare, environment, land, and corporate accountability work.
Ethical considerations in data collection, analysis, and engagement with communities.
The politics of data, how data can both enable accountability and be used to legitimise unequal outcomes.

Skills (What participants will be able to do)

By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

Frame relevant data questions based on real-world social, policy, and community concerns.
Read and critically interpret reports, dashboards, and official claims, and verify data through cross-checking and contextual understanding.
Collect community-level data ethically using accessible, phone-based tools such as Google Forms, Kobo, and SurveyCTO.
Clean, organise, and analyse raw datasets using simple tools, including spreadsheets, pivot tables, and basic calculations.
Work with public datasets and RTI responses to support audits, monitoring, and accountability efforts.
Create basic graphs and visualizations and develop clear data stories for advocacy, reporting, and campaigns.
Use AI tools thoughtfully (for example, for summarisation or exploratory analysis) while understanding their limitations and risks.

Attitudes (What participants will reflect on or change)

The workshop seeks to foster:

Confidence and a sense of agency in working with data, even for participants without technical or quantitative backgrounds.
A critical and questioning orientation towards data, moving beyond acceptance of official numbers to asking what is missing, whose voices are excluded, and why.
An ethical, community-centred approach to data collection and use.
Recognition of data as both a technical and political tool, and responsibility in how it is used for social change.
Motivation to translate data insights into concrete action after the workshop.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is designed for:

Development practitioners/social workers from civil society organisations, movements, and grassroots initiatives
Journalists, researchers, and communication practitioners
Policy advocates and campaigners wanting to make sense of publicly available data and use the same for their work. We won’t be focusing on any one particular field (labour, social welfare, health, environment, etc.), but the skills gained can be applied across.
Early-career professionals and students interested in using data for social justice

Basic familiarity with using a smartphone and/or computer. Participants are encouraged to bring their laptops to the workshop (to be able to do practical data-related work).
Participants are encouraged to bring a real issue, question, or concern from their work that they would like to explore using data.

Participant Contribution

We hope that participants will contribute an amount of Rs. 5,000/- towards workshop expenses, inclusive of all on-site workshop costs: boarding, lodging, and all the materials used in the workshop. Travel of participants will have to be borne by the organisation/the participants.

Resource Persons:

Dr. Rajendran Narayan, Professor, Azim Premji University: Dr Rajendran Narayanan is an associate professor in the School of Arts and Sciences at Azim Premji University, teaching economics and anchoring the ‘Data, Democracy & Development’ track. He is a co-founder of LibTech India and works on transparency, accountability, and public policy research for social action.
Anirban, Centre for Financial Accountability: Anirban Bhattacharya leads the National Finance team at the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA), where he writes and campaigns on socio-economic issues, inequality, and democratic rights in India’s financial system. He engages in research and advocacy to promote transparency and accountability of financial institutions and economic policy.
Asmi Sharma: Asmi Sharma is a researcher based out of New Delhi. She has been working with various rights-based social movements including Jan Sarokar, the National Campaign for Peoples’ Right to Information, Financial Accountability Network, and Pension Parishad for the past seven years. Her areas of work and interest include transparency and accountability in governance, political economy of welfare in India, social sector spending, and access to socio-economic justice.
Avinash Singh, Co-Founder, How India Lives: Avinash Singh is a co-founder of How India Lives, a data analytics platform that organizes and visualizes public data to make it more accessible for research, decision-making, and public use across sectors in India. The platform aims to help policymakers, researchers, and the public interpret and use large datasets effectively.
Chakradhar Buddha, LibTech: Chakradhar Buddha is a senior researcher at LibTech India, where he writes and analyses implementation challenges of rural policies and governance mechanisms. Libtech is a collective working on transparency, accountability, and democratic engagement in public service delivery with a focus on social sector programs such as MGNREGA.
Nancy Pathak: Nancy is a researcher, the National Finance team at the Centre for Financial Accountability. She has been associated with movements demanding social rights and adequate welfare spending.

How to reach: Please visit: Getting here

For any other info: WhatsApp or call: 889 422 7954 (between 10 am to 5 pm), and email [email protected]

Applications Closed