OpenStacks-for-Change: Modular, open-source tools and documentation stacks for public interest research, evaluation, and program design.
An open, modular ecosystem of tools and infrastructures for better research, evaluation, and program design — built in India, shared for impact.
Across public health, climate programs, education systems, and gender equity work — we keep solving the same problems and rebuilding the same tools from scratch.
Open Stacks for Change is my response:
A growing ecosystem of field-aware, testable, and reusable stacks designed for public interest work — built from real-world experience in MEL systems, research, and programs.
These stacks help answer a deeper question:
🧩 How do we build systems that learn — not just deliver?
I'm a development economist, researcher, and social justice practitioner with over two decades of experience across livelihoods, public health, climate resilience, education, and gender equity in India and South Asia. My work spans large-scale research, evaluation, MEL strategy, and program design.
👉 Click here to view my full CV (PDF)
| Stack | Description |
|---|---|
| InsightStack | Knowledge systems, documentation SOPs, and planning calculators |
| FieldStack | Applied R tools and MEL workflows — real notebooks, real data |
| EquityStack | Python-powered templates for WEE, education, health, and evaluation analysis |
Each stack is real, runnable, and used in the field — not a prototype.
Upcoming stacks include:
- PolicyStack → Scheme analysis, policy mapping, and budget planning tools
- ClimateStack → Composite risk scores, resilience modeling, and geo-mapping
- EduStack → Learning assessment pipelines, education dashboard prep
- SocialStack → Tools for rapid ethnography, qualitative coding, and NLP
- InfraStack → Access scoring, infrastructure mapping, spatial planning
Each new stack will be:
- Open-source, reproducible, and field-ready
- Documented and tested
- Designed for public impact
You're welcome to:
- Use these stacks in your program, research, or MEL work
- Fork and adapt them for your own teams
- Suggest a new stack or collaborate on one
- Share feedback, ideas, and extensions
If this project has been useful to you, please consider supporting it:
- 💖 Buy Me a Coffee
- 📱 UPI:
varna@icici - 🌐 Support Page
Built in India. Open for the world.
If our systems are meant to serve people, then our tools should too. ✨
🛠️ Authorship Note
AI tools (like ChatGPT) were used in parts of this repository to support tasks such as documentation formatting, code generation, or editing — similar to using VSCode extensions, StackOverflow, or libraries like Pandas.
All decisions, designs, datasets, and content curation are entirely mine.
Using modern tools responsibly is part of authorship — not a substitute for it.
If you use this project in your work, please cite it as:
GitHub style
Varna Sri Raman. (2025). OpenStacks for Change. GitHub. https://github.com/Varnasr/OpenStacks-for-Change
Chicago style
Raman, Varna Sri. 2025. OpenStacks for Change. GitHub. https://github.com/Varnasr/OpenStacks-for-Change
📄 Licensed under the MIT License.
For citation and usage rights, see this repository’s LICENSE file or contact varna.sr@gmail.com.
