Bengaluru: Home is where the heart is. After travelling for years and exploring different corners of the world, Ravi Sonnad is set for a homecoming, carrying with him hopes of a more educated state.
Founded in 2013, Enabling Leadership, started its operation in 2014 and celebrated its annual event that just got over on Wednesday in a village outside Dharwad. Over 1,500 people from villages around Dharwad came to watch football matches and singing performances.
“We started with the premise that education allows young people choices, but as we thought this more, we were struck by two very important things. Firstly, we saw people who were very well educated seemed not to make the right choices and very often were self-centered, short-term in their thinking and did not seem to take into account principles and values. While the global community and intellectuals understood the need for and the importance of global citizenship, there was a very big gap in thinking and implementation and an even bigger gap in understanding the urgency of the need,” explains Mr Sonnad, who started the Enabling Leadership foundation with this thought. The foundation is a non-profit funding organisation that invests in creative solutions that enable children to develop into leaders of the future.
His belief was focussed mainly on the need for skill development which is even more urgent in developing countries and among underprivileged communities. “You need a child-centric and out-of-the-box way of teaching to foster these behaviours, habits and perspectives. As I travelled across Asia, it became apparent that if we continued down the same path that we’ve been in the last 100 years, the impact of such a large population going forward would be so big that we would not stand the chance of being able to live in a sustainable world,” he adds.
The Foundation is currently working with underprivileged 9-13-year-old children in rural areas and from developing countries. “We run a unique after-school programme that uses music and sports to teach Leadership Skills and to instill ideas and inculcate behaviours consistent with what we expect from the leaders of tomorrow.”
The Foundation consistently works along three lines. “The nature and scale of problems facing the world today requires very creative solutions. Yet, these very solutions are not implemented because they do not follow established educational policies. We look for ‘out-of-the-box’ ideas that can potentially change the world of education,” says Mr Sonnad.
The foundation looks for unique and proven educational initiatives that develop leadership skills in children and work with these groups to help them scale their approach as efficiently as possible. “In addition to funding, we connect them with other groups who can take their ideas to a broader audience. Also, one of the biggest bottlenecks to good education is teaching quality. We look for innovative programmes and approaches to develop teachers and equip them with tool kits to integrate leadership skill development into their teaching methods,” he says.
The NGO plans to have its presence across Asia over the next 3-4 years and also to scale up their operations across other villages in Karnataka. Currently, the Foundation is planning to concentrate on Hubli-Dharwad and four villages in North Karnataka.
“We will be looking for funding starting from June of this year, first from individual donors who would be willing to adopt one child for a year or a full group or a full village, and then approaching corporate sponsors later in the year,” says Mr Sonnad, who has plans to come back to Bengaluru from Singapore to stay close to his field of operations.
Theory of change
- Vision: Every child develops into a leader: a role model, a global citizen, a positive contributor.
- Mission: To use innovative programmes that develop leadership skills in children. To encourage every individual to get involved in and contribute towards the foundation’s vision.
- Approach: The foundation works with underprivileged 9-13-year-old children in rural areas and from developing countries. It runs a unique after-school programme that uses music and sports to teach leadership skills and instil the ideas and inculcate behaviours consistent with what it expects from the leaders of tomorrow. Each year starts with an intensive training programme that gives music teachers and sports coaches the tools and techniques to run the programme. At the end of a 10-month cycle, the children in the music programme write, compose and perform their own song in front of a public audience and the children in the sports programme play in a tournament.
