Dates
2027 (to be announced)​

Venue
(to be announced)

Language
Bilingual (Hindi & English)

Facilitators
Anju Uppal & Prabir Bose

Anju and Prabir engage in participatory communication, with a rights-based, process-oriented approach. They facilitate workshops, design communication & facilitation resources, practise participatory theatre, research and document processes, and make films. Through cultural expression and action, they challenge dominant narratives and provoke a rethink on development. At present they are working towards creating a body of work around critical thinking for social and ecological justice.

What does it mean to truly belong?

Who gets heard, and who remains invisible?

What have we inherited about difference, power, and coexistence?

What might we need to unlearn together?

We live in a time marked by deep divisions, growing anxieties, and increasing polarisation. Across homes, institutions, workplaces, communities, and public spaces, we are confronted with questions of difference, identity, power, exclusion, and coexistence.

Welcoming to Belonging is a reflective and participatory residential workshop that invites participants to collectively engage with these questions through dialogue, stories, games, theatre-based processes, group activities, and critical reflection.

Rather than offering ready-made solutions, the workshop creates space for reflection, unlearning, dialogue, and co-creation. Together, we explore what it might mean to move from being welcomed to truly belonging.

The workshop will include:

• Dialogue and collective reflection
• Stories and lived experiences
• Games and participatory activities
• Theatre-based processes
• Group work and shared learning
• Informal conversations and residential engagement

The workshop is intentionally residential. Shared meals, pauses, informal conversations, and time spent together beyond structured sessions are integral to the learning experience. We believe belonging cannot be explored only intellectually; it must also be experienced, negotiated, and practised collectively.

Who is this workshop for?
The workshop is for individuals and organisations willing to question assumptions, engage differences with openness and honesty, reflect critically on power and participation, and explore more meaningful ways of living and working together.

Interested?

3rd Edition: 2026

From welcoming to belonging!

What does it take to move from being welcomed to truly belonging?

That question stayed with us through four days of conversations, experiences, reflection, play and exploration at Deolali.

Together, we explored identity, power, diversity, exclusion, othering, equity and inclusion — and the relationships between them. We also began to look more closely at what it means to create spaces where people are not merely welcomed or included, but are able to participate, be heard, have agency, and feel that they belong.

Along the way, we discovered that belonging may be the harder question.

Perhaps because it asks us to look not only at who is welcomed, but also at who gets to shape the space.

We leave with new questions, deeper connections, and a continuing invitation to notice the spaces we create — in our organisations, communities and everyday lives.

Welcoming to Belonging
Beyond DEI. Learning to live together.

Facilitated by Anju Uppal & Prabir Bose and hosted by Vikalp Kriya.

2nd Edition: 2025

September 15 to 19, 2025
Five-day Residential Workshop

Leslie Sawhny Centre, Deolali, District Nashik, Maharashtra

Unlearning and co-creating!

Thats what it takes to move from being welcomed to truly belonging.

Sixteen participants joined from Goa, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Nagaland, and Rajasthan, bringing with them diverse experiences — from civil society organisations such as Bhavi Nirman Society, Equal Community Foundation (ECF), Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Lupin Human Welfare and Research Foundation, and Pahal-Nurturing Lives; from academic spaces like the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Jodhpur; and as independent practitioners, writer-designers, filmmakers, and trade union activists.

Over five days, we explored questions of identity, power, exclusion, intersectionality, and equity, and alongside the workshop process created our own Charters of Belonging — living documents capturing the learnings and collective commitments to equity and inclusion.

We return with renewed clarity, deeper connections, and the courage to carry this work forward.

Big thanks to Shahnawaz for the lovely group photo.

​Facilitated by Anju Uppal & Prabir Bose and hosted by Vikalp Kriya.

1st Edition: 2024

Mazedaar!

That one word captures the intense five-day process of our recently concluded residential workshop in rain-soaked Goa: Welcoming to Belonging! Engendering DEI through Participatory Practices.

The participants represented a wide range of organisations: Avaazein Foundation, Breakthrough Trust, Deep Griha Society, Foundation for Ecological Security (FES), Foundation for Social Transformation (FST), SNEHA Mumbai, VSO International, WWF India, and other individuals from across the country—Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, and Manipur.

​Facilitated by Anju Uppal & Prabir Bose and hosted by Vikalp Kriya.

facilitate workshops

We facilitate processes that encourage dialogue, analysis and provoke a rethink on the dominant power relations and explore rights, gender, participation and communication to challenge the "culture of silence".

We carry out learning needs assessments (LNAs), design and develop modules and handbooks, facilitate workshops, provide handholding support and document learning processes.

Our workshops bring together participants from diverse backgrounds. Our past workshops have been attended by community volunteers, development workers from non-profits, donor agencies & government departments; activists from campaigns & movements; ​theatre and media practitioners; students and faculty members, children and young people, farmers and workers.

We invite you to an exciting, engaging and enriching learning journey! If you would like to host or participate in any of our workshops, please email [email protected]