From Community to Community: How Impactful Is a SALT Learning Exposure Visit?

[Brinty Saha]

Community-led change is often rooted in a shared understanding of strengths, experiences, and aspirations. What if communities coming together as learners who can learn from one another? This process is at the heart of the SALT Exposure Learning Visit—an initiative that fosters connection, reflection, and action among communities. In this blog, I will take you through the journey of Alokito Kori with Narayanganj Harijan community as they shared, learned, and implemented transformative ideas through community-driven initiatives from recent community visit in Mymensingh Harijan Palli and Charbin Para community of Ashirbad, one of the partner organisations in ARC Bangladesh cohort.

We started with reflection deeply as a team on why connecting communities in this way was important. The discussions revealed three clear reasons:

1.To Spark Motivation: By connecting communities, we inspired each other to take ownership of their own challenges and work toward meaningful change.
2.To Identify Strengths: Through shared learning, communities could identify and tap into their own strengths and resources.
3.To Share Learnings: This connection wasn’t one-way—it was a platform for communities to not only receive help but also share their learnings and innovations with others.

After a reflection meeting with Rituu, we decided on the following pairing :

Narayanganj Harijan Community → Mymensingh Harijan Palli: Both communities share similar caste, language, and occupation, as well as social exclusion issues. The youth teams in both communities were already taking meaningful initiatives like education and sports.
This connection wasn’t made to compare, but to share experiences, learn from each other, and inspire meaningful change. Three adolescents, two females with children along with our team completed our learning visit from 18 December to 19 December, 2026

The SALT exposure visit was an opportunity for community members to learn by observation. It wasn’t about lectures or formal presentations—it was about seeing real, community-led initiatives in action. From Mymensingh Harijan Palli, Narayanganj Harijan Community learnt significantly youth taking leadership roles, women collaborating across caste lines, plastic recycling initiative. From Bin Community, they observed the strength of livelihood - selling flowers, vegetables to the market along with community's initiative to conduct a pre-primary learning center, restarting tailoring with income generation.

After the exposure visit, we facilitated an After Event Reflection (AER) session. Community members shared what had moved them the most:

Pinky Rani: “I was deeply moved by the unity in Ashirbad board members. Despite being from different castes, they stand together in times of crisis. This unity is something we still lack in our community.”
Pratigya: “I was inspired by the youth in Harijan Palli. They are taking action for the development of their community. They’re setting a great example for us.”
Shreya: “The courage of the girls in Charbin Para who are stopping early marriage, gambling, and mobile addiction—this was inspiring to see.”
Ruptanu: “I was amazed by the recycling initiatives. I never imagined that discarded items could be repurposed like this.”
Satyaboti Rani: “The woman making bangles and handicrafts was truly inspiring. If she can do this, why can’t I? I’ll start making them too.”
The visit sparked a desire to take action, looking back to their inner strengths.

The question then arose: How will we share what we’ve learned? The answer was simple: through a festival. Inspired by the GYRF Knowledge Fair in Gopalganj, Shreya and Pratigya envisioned a Winter Festival—a celebration of the community’s culture, creativity, and newfound learning.

The festival would feature:
Dance performances
Poetry and rhyme recitations
A drama on Gender-Based Violence and Early Marriage

The adolescents recognized the need for systems change. They reached out to their Panchayat members for support, wanting to involve them in the festival as they observe active involvement of panchayat in Mymensingh Harijan Palli. Shreya, whose father is a community leader, asked for his advice.

The preparation for the festival was intense, involving adolescents working day and night. From drama scriptwriting to decorations, they poured their hearts into making the event a success. They even recycled plastic bottles for decorations and involved mothers in making traditional pitha for the festival. Satyabati Rani brought materials from local market to make bengales.

The winter evening arrived, and the community gathered on 8 January, 2026. The cold air couldn’t dampen the warmth of their collective effort. Children filled the space, wearing borrowed costumes, The entire event was filled with music, dance performance of childrens, drama.

In the meantime, Shreya took the stage while sharing her learnings from Mymensingh Harijan Palli, she boldly addressed the crowd:
“Stop early marriage. Stop gambling during Diwali. Learn from other communities.”

The drama unfolded, and the community watched in silence, reflecting on the issues raised. A Panchayat member stood up after the performance and said:
“If you see early marriage, come to me. I will try to stop it.”

Ruptanu, Pratigya also shared their learnings and got applause from community. Satyaboti Rani also shared how she got inspired from community member of Harijan Polli, to restart making bangles once that was stopped.

The journey was not limited in learning from community to community, community to community connection has been developed also as we see how both communities interacted warmly exchanging.

The SALT Exposure Learning Journey transformed communities by fostering learning through dialogue, self-reflection, and action. It connected communities across barriers, sparked initiatives, and empowered youth to lead change. Through the collective efforts of the Narayanganj Harijan Community, we saw the power of community-led initiatives, guided by the values of SALT.