School of Management Studies, CUSAT, in association with Kerala Women's Commission, is organising a capacity-building program for Mothers of Children with moderate to high support needs.

Each time such opportunities came my way, I used to make it a point to ask if the participants could mention in advance

What their expectations are from this programme?

What do they hope to learn or take away?

Where do they perceive as a gap in knowledge, skill or support?

Most often the answer is, "Oh it does not matter, you have so much experience and knowledge just say something" or " Any topic is fine, you decide" or "they are open to anything" .

What I infer from this is "Do whatever, it does not matter, we just want to document that we conducted something for someone as we have the funding for it or we need to tick the checklist for this year to showcase something! " Sigh......

This would leave me so exhausted and confused as to how to prepare and several times I have had to change during the programme after I figured out either what I prepared was too much or too little or not relevant to the participants, or something they already knew.

What went way differently this time was that I was able to engage in a fruitful discussion with the organiser Dr. Nimitha from CUSAT and gain much more insight and we could together plan how we conduct the programme.

"When we make policies, programmes with the hope of supporting another [individual or group], let us include their voices and experiences too before deciding what is best for them"