Your donation equips children with leadership skills to overcome poverty and shape their future.

About Us

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 9-15-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.

Why Does Every Child Need to be a leader?
Our Theory of Change?

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.

OUR PROGRAMS

EL Build uses the pedagogy of play to enable children to create the world of their imagination. Using the principle of positive play, students design solutions using building blocks for real-world challenges in their home, school, village or larger community.

EL Play works in schools to help children garner multiple benefits of leadership development using football as a medium. 

Through a flagship curriculum that combines life skills with football drills, students engage in year-round rigorous training, participate in national leagues and get scouted at games, gaining exposure to sport and competition simultaneously.

EL Create is a  group-based music learning program that enables children from under-resourced schools to tell the stories of their dreams and communities. By enabling children to write original songs and hosting public performances, the program enables important leadership skills in students.

How We Enable
Leadership?

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

STRONG BELIEF SYSTEMS

  • Self Confidence
  • Growth Mindset
  • Ability to Achieve

BELIEF IN OTHERS

  • Positive Outlook Towards Others
  • Effective Communication
  • Teamwork and Collaboration

BELIEF IN VALUES AND PRINCIPLES

  • Understanding your Belief System
  • Living your values
  • Respect for Society, Systems and Civic Bodies

EXCELLENT PROBLEM SOLVING

CREATIVE THINKING

  • Risk-Taking Ability
  • Open-Mindedness and Curiosity
  • Out of the Box Thinking

CRITICAL THINKING

  • Analytical Skills
  • Contextual Cause and Effect
  • Drawing Logical Conclusions

RESPONSIBILITY FOR ACTION

  • Conflict Resolution
  • Bias to Action
  • Mobilizing Others to Act

A KEEN SENSE OF AWARENESS AND RESPONSIBILITY

FOR SELF

  • Self-Reflection
  • Health and Wellbeing
  • Awareness and Management of Emotions

FOR COMMUNITY

  • Empathy
  • Sense of Belonging
  • Taking Initiative for Betterment

FOR WORLD

  • Awareness of the Interconnectedness of the World
  • Global Citizenship
  • Inspiring Action in Others

Today We Impact

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Children

Sites

India – Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Dharwad, Kumta, Satana & Pollachi
Cambodia – Battambang
Kenya – Nairobi
Singapore

OUR BOARD

Shanti Lakshmi Mahendra

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 Paydon

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 Pozzoni

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.