Green Hub Fellowship, India
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This case innovation has been analysed using the Transformative Intervention Mixes (TIMs) framework. The framework maps the regulatory, economic, social‑behavioural, technological and material interventions at play, clarifying how these elements interact and what this configuration suggests about the innovation’s capacity to support transformative change.
The case analysis draws primarily on evidence synthesised from:
Banerji (2022) & GreenHub website
Overview
Participatory Youth Filmmaking for Biodiversity and Social Change
Green Hub Fellowship - India
Environmental education and youth capacity building; conservation communication; community-based documentation of biodiversity and livelihoods
A one-year residential fellowship based in Tezpur, Assam, that trains youth (particularly from remote areas, marginalised and indigenous communities) to learn about environment, wildlife, conservation, climate sustainability and social change through filmmaking.
Annual cohorts (one-year residential programme) drawing youth across the northeast states of India and North Bengal; programme activities include training and production of short films and documentation outputs.
Practical: fellows gain filmmaking and conservation skills and, in several cases, apply them in community conservation, restoration, eco-tourism and awareness work.
Political: some alumni-linked sites engage village councils, biodiversity management committees and other local institutions in decisions such as restoration and seasonal hunting restrictions.
Personal: the fellowship is designed to reconnect youth with nature, support self-development, and renew love and respect for natural resources.
High: the fellowship model is presented as a repeatable training programme that can expand through additional cohorts and geographic replication, contingent on delivery capacity and resources.
TIMs Summary
Information/ Education, Technology, Knowledge, Social Norms and Infrastructure (Hard/Soft) are strongly evidenced in this case. The fellowship is built around structured training, mentoring, field immersion, peer learning, video production, archives and festival-based exchange, while Emotional Appeal and Biophysical Resources are also present through storytelling, reconnection with nature and alumni-led conservation sites. Regulatory and Financial/ Market-Based tools appear more selectively, mainly through local institutional decisions in alumni contexts and through grants, jobs and livelihood pathways rather than through a formal programme-wide design. Choice Architecture is present in a limited but identifiable way through the staged training sequence, the wide-medium-close up pedagogy and the requirement to edit after each shoot.
This configuration indicates a primarily epistemic and relational transformative pathway that, in some sites, extends into local institutional change; implementation appears to depend on sustained mentoring, field-based learning and alumni continuity.
Implications for Intervention Mix Design
To broaden transformative scope, stronger alignment with Regulatory and Financial/ Market-Based tools would be needed where youth-led conservation work moves into longer-term livelihood, restoration or local governance settings. Additional alignment with Information/ Education and Knowledge tools across schools, archives and community use would also matter for diffusion beyond the fellowship cohort. The sources suggest that any such expansion would need to remain consistent with the fellowship's community-based and ecology-centred orientation.
TIMs Matrix
| Tool Category | Examples | How it ENABLES (mechanisms) | How it HINDERS (barriers) | Opportunities to strengthen | Risks / caveats | Additional suggestions and resources |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regulatory | Alumni-linked formation of a Biodiversity Management Committee in Changlangshu; village council discussion leading to a decision to ban hunting during certain seasons. | The locally grounded rules and committee structures translate conservation concerns into community decisions on restoration and hunting. | Evidence is limited to specific alumni-led sites rather than the fellowship as a whole, and the arrangements depend on community dialogue and local authority support. | Similar locally led committee and council engagement could strengthen conservation where alumni return to work with their own communities | Local rules may remain uneven across sites and fragile without sustained community backing and follow-through. | Biodiversity management committees; community-based conservation learning sites. |
| Financial / Market-Based | Further grants and fellowships received by alumni; jobs with NGOs and media houses; community-based eco-tourism and weaving support linked to some alumni sites. | The pathways create conservation-linked livelihood options and help fellows remain active in conservation and social change work after the fellowship year. | The analysed material does not present a stable funding architecture for all fellows; opportunities appear uneven and often depend on external grants, projects or local pilots. | There is scope to connect more alumni to the kinds of grants, jobs and livelihood pilots already described. | Dependence on project funding or market demand could make post-fellowship opportunities uneven across places and cohorts. | Community-based eco-tourism; conservation grants. |
| Information/ Education | One-year residential fellowship to learn about environment, wildlife, conservation and climate sustainability through filmmaking; programme focus on engaging youth in conservation, sustainable livelihoods and social change via video. | The initiative builds participant knowledge and capabilities, enabling youth to document local biodiversity and socio-environmental issues. | The model is intensive and time-demanding, relying on repeated mentoring, field returns and organisational partnerships to sustain learning quality. | Scope to extend use of films, video curriculum and school-facing models to broader educational settings. | Without documented pathways for use of outputs, learning may remain confined to participants and audiences reached by films. | Partnerships with conservation organisations and education systems to integrate outputs into ongoing programmes. |
| Choice Architecture | The wide-medium-close up pedagogy; staged sequence of workshops, field shoots, iterative edits and final festival presentation; mandatory editing after each shoot. | The pedagogical design features structure how fellows observe, frame and revisit subjects, making reflection and progressive skill-building part of the learning process without removing choice. | The approach requires substantial mentor time and repeated feedback, and its effectiveness depends on fellows being able to sustain the full cycle of fieldwork and revision. | Applying the same structured method through curricula, workshops and archive use could reinforce consistency in future cohorts | A strongly standardised storytelling sequence could narrow variation in how some subjects are approached if not balanced with context-specific mentoring. | Introduce pre-set templates or ‘smart defaults’ in the fellows’ planning materials that automatically include placeholders for specific ecological indicators or community perspectives. Defaults powerfully guide behaviour without restricting choice, nudging fellows to consider a holistic view of biodiversity. |
| Social Norms | Peer learning and mentoring during the fellowship; the Alumni Collective; youth networks described as replacing conflict with convergence across states and communities. | The fellowship normalises collective action, mutual learning and conservation-oriented identity by building a network of youth change-makers and by linking fellows back to their communities. | Maintaining this normative effect depends on active alumni connections and on continued opportunities for fellows to work together after graduation. | The analysed material points to alumni meets, collective structures and community-facing projects as ways to reinforce these norms over time. | If alumni links weaken, peer support and shared conservation identity may dissipate unevenly across the region. | Alumni Collective; Green Hub Festival; youth environment leadership in communities. |
| Emotional Appeal | Use of storytelling and visual narratives to engage audiences around environmental conservation, sustainable livelihoods and social change. | Visual storytelling and place-based experience mobilise attachment, empathy and pride, helping fellows and audiences connect conservation with lived landscapes and community well-being. | Emotional engagement alone does not replace the long practical training and community grounding described in the analysed material. | Continued use of screenings, festivals and well-being collaborations can deepen engagement when linked to grounded conservation work | Narrative emphasis may privilege compelling stories over systematic representation of biodiversity issues if not counterbalanced by evidence processes. | Facilitated community screenings with structured deliberation |
| Technology | Filmmaking and video documentation as the programme medium; training youth to use cameras and video tools to produce documentation outputs. | The technology used provides practical means to document and communicate biodiversity and social issues from local perspectives. | This model depends on access to equipment, editing processes, mentors and systems that were historically expensive or inaccessible to many youth. | Continued development of archives, digital educational resources and technical support systems | Technical dependence may create uneven participation where access to equipment, editing capacity or organisational support is weaker. | Digital archiving and distribution infrastructure for film outputs. |
| Infrastructure (Hard/Soft) | A one-year residential fellowship; Green Hub as a video documentation centre; mentor support, partner organisations, festival platform and an emerging forest studio. | The hard and soft infrastructures provide the organisational base for training, field placement, editing, presentation, archiving and alumni continuity. | The model relies on sustained coordination across mentors, partner organisations, host spaces and follow-on support, which can be demanding to maintain. | There is scope to strengthen the infrastructure through archive development, school-facing models, learning sites and dedicated editing support for forest staff. | Infrastructure that depends heavily on a small coordinating core may face bottlenecks as the network expands. | Green Hub Festival; partner internship network. |
| Biophysical Resources | Community-based forest project sites led by alumni; restoration area selection in Changlangshu; the sacred hill site at Dongamukam; community forests and local biodiversity as filming and conservation sites. | The fellowship connects learning to actual landscapes and species, and in some alumni sites this supports restoration, hunting restraint, eco-tourism and locally grounded conservation action. | Evidence for direct ecological intervention is concentrated in selected alumni-led sites rather than across the full fellowship network. | Additional learning sites and community-based conservation projects could expand this dimension. | Site-based gains may remain localised and dependent on continuing community leadership and support. | Forest Project learning sites; community-based eco-tourism. |
| Knowledge | More than 2,500 hours of footage and over 1,000 recorded species in the video archive; documentation of biodiversity, traditional knowledge and local practices; films used in schools, festivals, community screenings, proposals and research. | The intervention produces and circulates situated knowledge, turning local documentation into educational, research and communication resources for multiple stakeholders. | Evidence on knowledge products, monitoring or formal evaluation is not provided in the analysed material. Knowledge production requires systematic management of footage and continued curation if it is to remain usable beyond the fellowship itself | Further archive development, curriculum creation and wider educational access are strengthening routes. | If knowledge claims are not accompanied by documented methods, external credibility may be uneven across audiences. Without systematic management, large volumes of footage can remain underused or unevenly accessible. | Structured monitoring and evaluation of learning and conservation outcomes. |
| Other | Cross-sector collaboration involving NGOs, forest departments, local administrations, academic institutions, mental health partners and cultural networks. | The hybrid partnerships connect conservation, youth development, well-being, culture and livelihoods in ways that exceed any single tool category. | The breadth of collaboration depends on maintaining coordination across diverse partners with different mandates and capacities. | The analysed materials imply that collaborative growth is central to scaling the model and broadening its reach. | Partnership complexity may generate uneven depth of engagement across themes and locations. | Youth Wellness Hub partnership; Anahad collaboration; organisational internship partnerships. |
Note: Blank cells reflect that the documentary evidence available for this case did not contain sufficiently explicit information to address these dimensions. This absence should not be interpreted as implying that such mechanisms were irrelevant or ineffective, but simply that they were not documented within the scope of the source materials.