Woman of impact

It’s not often that we get the opportunity to celebrate young women leading international non-profits.  Growing up in a small town, Gudalur in Tamil Nadu, 34-year-old Preethi Herman came from a conservative community with an extremely repressive environment for women. As somebody who had not used a computer until she was 18, Preethi is now the executive director of  Change.org. Preethi says, “I am a survivor of that environment.”

Talking about the defining moment that led her to Change.org, the former country director of India says, “As I started developing my understanding of the challenges within the society, I realised that I could never find solutions for more than a few problems as an individual. I was fascinated with the idea of being able to support emerging leadership skills in people so that they could create the change they want to see. We have so many problems in our community and we need that many or more solutions, and that was only going to happen if millions of people engaged in finding solutions to the problems they faced everyday. I was in the process of setting up an organisation to do exactly this, when a friend told me about Change.org. I was fascinated by it because it was similar to my idea but much better because it saw the potential of technology to scale the level of impact we could have in the country. I knew that moment that I had to be a part of building this phenomena.”

A big fan of servant leadership, she believes in being of service to the team — proactively support teams and individuals to be set up for success, approach challenges with clear focus on the ultimate goal and address them with equal emphasis on logic as well as emotional intelligence, love and understanding. “Our aim is to support the growth of people-led social movements that are sustained by citizens and create transformational change in their societies. We do that by empowering people, in particular those directly affected by critical issues to use technology and build social movements,” says Preethi, who joined Change.org five years ago.

Preethi has been instrumental in facilitating a dialogue between citizens and decision makers who have the power to bring about change. As a result of her efforts, Union Minister Maneka Gandhi and Delhi Minister Kapil Mishra officially responded on Change.org to people’s concerns. Members of Parliament Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Shashi Tharoor, Milind Deora and others have started petitions of their own, reinforcing the belief that even policy makers need public support to make change happen.

When Preethi joined a country director, India, in 2012, there were 50 petitions being signed in India every month. In five years, the number has increased to an average of 2,000 petitions a month.

The Change.org Foundation is an international non-profit that supports citizen-led and technology-driven social movements in the Global South. Today, Change.org have over 40 million people who have supported campaigns across Asia and Latin America with offices in Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia and Indonesia, India, Thailand and Japan.

“With several lakhs of petitions ranging of issues is quite huge. Petition subjects vary from consumer issues, corruption and censorship. Some popularly supported issues include child rights, health and animal rights. We also get subjects like cinema, Bollywood and the casting on TV soaps. This range is very reflective of the diversity the billions of people in this world. Interestingly, the increasing number of hyper-local issues is also an indication that people are taking action on issues that might not have popular resonance across the country — but definitely strong and impactful locally,” says Preethi.

Every day, Preethi leads a team who supports citizens and the campaigns they have started, creates communities of changemakers, generates media and social media attention to critical issues, and works with politicians and decision makers so they understand the power and importance of citizen-led activism. “All this pretty much sounds like a dream job and very much in alignment with how I aspired to contribute to the world. I am lucky to have had an opportunity to play this role,” she adds.

Talking about the inspiring and powerful campaign started by regular citizen, she says, “Twenty years ago, Subarna Ghosh experienced a forced C-section and, after meeting other mothers who had similar experiences, started a campaign to decrease the high number of dangerous, unnecessary caesarian deliveries in India. Her campaign was supported by over 310,000 people and the online petition became a forum where thousands of India women shared their own stories. The Central Government Health Scheme recently announced plans to make thousands of its national hospitals announce their C-section rates. Today, Subarna is continuing the movement for maternal health rights, working with a community of medical professionals, journalists, educators and the thousands of people who supported her campaign.”

For Preethi, awards play the role of a catalyst to take forward her vision. She has recently been selected by the Indian government as one of the 25 women transforming India as part of the #WomenTransform initiative by Niti Aayog, MyGov.in and the UN.

She has won the international award - The French Alsacienne Prize for Democratic Engagement and was  chosen as one of the top 50 influential women in Indian Media, Advertising Marketing by the Impact Magazine in 2016. Under her leadership, the Change.org India team also won a Special Mention Award for E-Governance at the Manthan Awards 2014.

Campaign capers

• Successful local and regional campaigns that have inspired and generated copy-cat campaigns in other issues and geographies.
• Subarna, a home-maker and mother of two, who through our programme has grown to lead a national campaign fighting unnecessary and dangerous c-sections after her personal experience 18 years ago. Her campaign has changed the central policy in India on maternal health.
• Masooma, a FGM survivor, has been leading the largest campaign to end FGM in India and become an international spokesperson for an issue that until recently was not even acknowledged in India due to cultural secrecy and repression.
• Subarna and Masooma are just two of the hundreds of examples from the work of highly engaged citizens taking action on under represented issues that needs critical intervention in India. Campaigns like theirs have gone on to engage almost Rs 1 crore citizens in India to start their own campaigns, and have turned into communities of people continuously engaged in an issue, spawning organisations and new leaders.

Forging a new path

Preethi has the prestigious honour of becoming the only Indian (among 20 civic leaders across the world) to be selected for the coveted Obama Foundation fellowships that have just been announced. These are the first fellowships from Obama Foundation and Preethi’s selection is a great recognition of her work.