Five stories. Five programmes. Twelve villages.
Every case study below is verified by the community it describes, an internal Meer Foundation reviewer who did not work on the case, and — where applicable — a government partner or academic reviewer. Names of contributing villages and reviewers appear in each case footer.
Stories that the numbers cannot tell
Statistics tell you how many. Case studies tell you how. Each of the five cases below documents a different facet of the Meer Foundation practice — a river walked, a woman-led FPO built, a tribal district taught, a cohort studied, a world record set.
Three-layer verification
Each case is signed off by (1) the community it describes, (2) an internal Meer Foundation reviewer who did not work on the case, and (3) where applicable, a government or academic reviewer.
Geographic specificity
Every case carries a real location, a real year, and a real village list. No anonymised clusters. No composite narratives.
Outcome over output
A bridge built is an output. Crossings made is an outcome. We count outcomes. Each case ends with a metric that means something to the people it describes.
How each case is built
A case study begins as a field report. It is then expanded through interviews with named community members, cross-checked against SHG registers / school records / PHC data, returned to the village for a community meeting, and finally reviewed by an internal Meer Foundation reviewer who did not work on the case. The footer of each case lists every contributing village and every reviewer.
From Sakri to Tiranga — five verified stories
Each card below opens into a full case study: image placeholder, location, year, narrative summary, verified outcome, and headline metric. Click the programme badge to jump to the relevant initiative page.
Sakri River Restoration
Over five years, the Bolti Nadi team walked all 90 km of the Sakri river system end-to-end on foot, meeting every riparian village along the way. The walk produced a primary dataset on bank erosion, sand mining, and riparian forest loss — and a restoration plan co-authored by 12 villages.
Native riparian plantation restored along 14 km of riverbank. Sand-mining permits in two stretches were paused by the district administration after the team submitted its DO and turbidity data. Twelve villages adopted a joint river-management gram-sabha resolution.
Sunita's FPO
Sunita Verma, a 34-year-old farmer from Mohdi village, was one of the first women trained under Farmours' organic-farming curriculum. In four years she built — and now chairs — a women-led Farmer Producer Organisation spanning 3,320 households across Dhamtari and Kanker.
The FPO reported an average household income of ₹2.5 lakh in FY 2024–25, verified against procurement records and bank deposits. Sunita now mentors 18 newer FPOs across the state, and the Dhamtari model is being studied by the State Rural Livelihoods Mission.
Prayaas Bastar
Prayaas, our free CGBSE-aligned virtual school, was extended to Bastar in 2022. The programme delivered Class 1–12 study materials in Hindi and English to 62 tribal ashram schools — many of which had no regular subject teachers for mathematics, science, or English.
Class 10 pass percentage in the 12 Prayaas-supported Bastar schools rose from 41% (2022) to 78% (2025). Six Prayaas alumni are now in the first cohort of the EduSuTo coaching track, preparing for state engineering and nursing entrance exams.
Yoga Kutumb Cohort
A two-year cohort study followed 240 rural households through the Yoga Kutumb programme — weekly pranayama, asana, and emergency-response training. The cohort was matched against a control group from neighbouring villages.
After 24 months, the cohort reported 38% fewer hospital visits for cardiac and respiratory complaints (self-reported, verified against PHC registers). Eighty-five per cent of households said they had used the emergency-response training at least once in the period.
Tiranga World Record
On the eve of Independence Day 2019, Meer Foundation convened a 15-kilometre continuous human chain in Raipur — the 'Meri Jaan Tiranga Hai' rally. Citizens of every age, religion, and language held the tricolour end-to-end from Tatibandh to Telibandha.
The rally entered the Limca Book of Records as the longest continuous human chain holding the national flag. Coverage ran in The Hindu, Times of India, and Dainik Bhaskar. The founder addressed the closing ceremony at Telibandha lake.
Each case study has a longer companion PDF — village-level data, interview transcripts, and the community-attestation appendix. They live on the Statistics · Resources section and on the relevant initiative page.
Why case studies — and why only five
A case study is not a victory lap. It is a method. These slides explain the principles that decide which stories get told, and which stay in the field notebook.
Each case is verified three ways: by the community it describes, by an internal Meer Foundation reviewer who did not work on it, and where applicable by a government or academic partner.
Every case begins as a field report — written by the team that walked the river, formed the FPO, or taught the class.
Before publication, the case returns to the village for a gram-sabha reading. Disagreements are recorded in the appendix.
Each case closes with one metric that means something to the people it describes — not a vanity number.
Test your case-study recall
Five questions drawn directly from the five verified case studies above. Score 60% or higher to earn a certificate of case-study literacy.
Case studies · 5-question quiz
5 questions · passing score 60%
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
Three criteria. (1) The case must have a verified outcome — not just an output. (2) The community behind the case must be willing to be named and to sign off on the narrative. (3) The case must be replicable — there must be something another village, district, or NGO could learn from it. We publish roughly two to three new case studies per year; the bar is high on purpose.