Your donation equips children with leadership skills to overcome poverty and shape their future.
Today, over 800 million children in economically and socially difficult situations do not have the opportunity to develop essential skills and qualities like problem solving, collaboration and communication, values and principles, and gender equality. This critical gap where these children are not equipped to become responsible and employable citizens is leading to a crisis in our future society since it does not allow them to work themselves out of the cycle of poverty. (United Nations recognizes this crisis in the form of needing to develop global citizenship skills under Sustainable Development Goal # 4 of providing inclusive and equitable quality education.)
Across employers, work-readiness of youth is seen as the most important area that needs urgent attention. Key competencies that youth lack include communication skills, professionalism, confidence, interpersonal skills to work in diverse teams, innovation, and conceptual understanding of problems. Employers note the biggest obstacle is not that jobs are not available but that candidates are not work-ready. With a very large % of youth, the largest workforce by 2027 will be in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. The above gaps are more exaggerated for youth from low-income backgrounds whose parents or schools cannot guide them in their education/career choices.
Enabling Leadership works with 11-15-year-old children from underprivileged backgrounds and through creative and innovative programs (that use Football and Lego), inculcates these essential and critical skills that are indispensable to becoming productive and responsible adults and eventually working themselves out of intergenerational poverty. Each program is carefully designed to enable children to collaborate, reflect on and connect first-hand experiences and learnings from the classroom or playground with their real lives.
Evidence proves that education can lead to improved human development indices like improved health, reduced poverty and child mortality.
But what enables individuals to make ‘right’ choices – ones that take responsibility for improving our combined futures? This is at the heart of our theory of change.
And we believe that strong leadership skills are vital to creating choices as well as making the right choices.
Enabling Leadership Build (EL Build) is an innovative play-based program designed to build curiosity in STEAM concepts and develop essential life skills, positive mindsets and behaviours leading to lasting success in students in under-resourced schools across India & Cambodia. A key focus area of the program is breaking gender stereotypes, encouraging girls to take interest in STEAM understanding as well as providing a safe environment for girls and boys to problem solve together in mixed-gender teams.
The EL Play program works in government & low-income schools to help children garner multiple benefits of leadership development using football as a medium. The program uses the power of team sports and a unique mixed-gender format to develop essential Life skills. The curriculum combines life skills with mixed-gender football drills, and participation in a proprietary regional and national-level national league.
Enabling Leadership Play (EL Play) uses the powerful medium of mixed-gender football to develop critical leadership skills and mindsets in children from low-income communities. Through structured coaching, mixed-gender league matches, and reflective team huddles, every child learns to communicate, collaborate, and lead with empathy and discipline.
EL Create is Enabling Leadership’s powerful music-based leadership program that helps children discover confidence, creativity, identity, and expression through group-based music learning. In schools where self-expression is often limited and children are told their voices don’t matter, EL Create opens a brave new space — where they sing, write, compose, collaborate, and defy the impossible.
A unique framework on leadership underpins each of our program, setting competencies in skills including problem solving, creativity, analytical thinking, collaboration, communication, ethics, action and accountability. Our carefully designed programs in music, football and Lego enable children to learn these valuable leadership skills.
STRONG BELIEF SYSTEMS
BELIEF IN OTHERS
BELIEF IN VALUES AND PRINCIPLES
CREATIVE THINKING
CRITICAL THINKING
RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTION
FOR SELF
FOR COMMUNITY
FOR WORLD
India – Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Dharwad, Kumta, Satana & Pollachi
Cambodia – Battambang
Kenya – Nairobi & Kericho
Singapore
Shanti is global public health professional with over 25 years of experience on health systems strengthening for advancing women and children’s health outcomes. She has held leadership and advisory roles on programmes in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, building best practice alliances with academic institutions, international agencies, and national governments. Over her career she has led and contributed to programmes funded by the World Health Organization, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, UNICEF, and Ford Foundation. She currently works with Options – a London based consultancy and has previously worked at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex.
Richard is an FCCA accountant of nearly 20 years. Based in the UJK he has worked as a FD across various industries with the last decade being predominantly tech start-up / scale ups and more recently International Finance.
Barbara has over 15 years of experience in the international development sector working for multilateral agencies and international NGOs. She has expertise in designing, managing and evaluating programmes in different thematic areas, including education, sexual and reproductive health and rights. She currently works for Plan International UK in business development, engaging with both institutional and private donors, and co-creating programmes for grant and commercial contract opportunities with colleagues based around the world. She holds a M.Phil. in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.
