In the heart of Dharavi, Mumbai, Asia’s largest informal settlement, a local nonprofit launched a tailoring and fashion design program for young women from low-income backgrounds. For Suraj, the program director and his small, enthusiastic team, the goal was simple – equipping girls with employability skills to help them earn an income and become independent. At first, the team received a highly positive response. Girls started joining the classes with excitement. However, soon things started to change. Attendance dropped drastically and some girls stopped coming altogether. The team was at a loss. Was the quality of the training not good enough, or was the curriculum so boring that the girls had started losing interest? To understand the exact reasons, the team decided to speak to the girls and their families.
The team soon discovered that the problem was not the quality of training. In fact, the girls loved the content, the teachers and their simple ways of training. The program’s success was being shaped by the larger social and cultural ecosystem. Like many underprivileged households in India, these girls faced pressures to do housework, care for their younger siblings, marry early, or have limited hours for which they can step outside their homes. The team soon realised that they had to work through navigating the larger socio-cultural barriers at play. They started working with the community and their families. They talked about redefining gender roles within the community and ensured the learning space felt safe and supportive to the parents. The team even planned to conduct sessions for parents and create new support systems in the community, so that these girls can take out time for the training.
The above anecdote reflects a broader truth about India’s social sector. Behind every social issue lies a web of other interrelated issues. It is this complexity that makes working with the social sector so demanding yet so vital.
This is a composite story based on real challenges faced by nonprofits working in informal settlements across India.
What Makes the Social Sector so Complex?
Working in the social sector means working to improve social issues in the domains of education, health, poverty, environment, gender equality, sustainability, and much more. Over the last few years, the sector has seen an increase in the number of nonprofit organisations and other civil society groups working in different ways to solve social issues at scale. The problems that these stakeholders want to solve are rarely straightforward, but highly interwoven. Take, for instance, a nonprofit trying to improve school attendance. They can’t do so without looking at a child’s access to proper nutrition, overall family income, or the safety of getting to school. Child nutrition and health, on the other hand, may involve taking care of clean water, sanitation, and access to proper healthcare facilities.
Each problem is connected to many others, and hence, trying to fix just one issue without understanding the full picture can lead to limited results or even create new problems. Moreover, India is a land of socio-cultural diversity. Hence, social systems such as caste, gender, and geography also play a big role in access to equal opportunities within the larger social context of the Indian subcontinent.
‘You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.’
— Buckminster Fuller
Systemic Lens: Seeing the Bigger Picture
Systemic Approach
To make lasting change, social sector organisations must look beyond individual problems and adopt a systemic approach, i.e. seeing issues as parts of a whole. Returning to the Dharavi example, what seemed like an increased dropout rate turned out to be a web of deeper challenges, such as family expectations, gender norms, safety, and restriction on mobility. Hence, the team had to not just work around training, but also build long-lasting trust with families, create safe spaces, and subtly challenge gender and social norms over a period of time.
Akshaya Patra Foundation
The Akshaya Patra Foundation, for instance, operates one of the world’s largest mid-day meal programs, serving over 2.25 million children across 16 states and 3 union territories in India. Their studies have shown that midday meals improve attendance rates among school children, reduce dropout rates, improve classroom performance, help in cognitive development and improve nutritional levels drastically. Hence, by providing nutritious meals in schools, the organisation not only combats classroom hunger but also incentivises school attendance, especially among children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Effective Practices to Navigate Social Sector Challenges
Apart from adopting a ‘systemic lens’, navigating the complexity of the social sector also includes adopting some other effective practices such as:
Stakeholder Alignment
This involves aligning all stakeholders, beneficiaries, community leaders, funders, and government officials to build a shared understanding of the problem and a shared vision for a solution. It’s only when the problem is identified clearly, can the problems be solved.
Digging deeper
Solutions to the social sector issues might appear very simple and logical at the outset. However, they are rarely as straightforward. Looking for root causes of problems, not just symptoms, and asking oneself, ‘What exactly is going on here?’ becomes imperative.
Adaptability and flexibility
Once the root cause of the problem is identified, the social sector organisations need to constantly adapt their implementation and impact strategies for need-based, real and sustained impact.
Redefining the meaning of ‘success’
Unlike the private sector, ‘success’ in the social sector is much harder to measure. Improvement in the lives of the people at large – better living conditions and access to health, empowered girls, women and communities takes time, and might not show up immediately. In fact, it might not show up for years. Human shifts like changes in mindset, attitudes or confidence, are difficult to measure.
Collaborative Efforts
While approaching a problem, all stakeholders come with different expectations and impact needs. The on-ground organisations need to hold it all together and need to strongly align with various stakeholders from time to time. Solutions to social issues need to be created with collaboration, patience, and creativity. Sometimes, situations demand tough choices where there is no perfect answer, yet one has to take the best possible way ahead.
Social sector leadership to navigate the complexity
The Need for Purpose-Driven Leaders
The sector needs leaders who not only understand scale and systems but who also lead with empathy, humility, and a people-first mindset. The sector needs seasoned professionals from the corporate world, where their experience in navigating complexity, leading teams, building systems, and driving results can be transformative for the social sector. However, leaders who cross over to the sector, often find themselves in situations where traditional success metrics don’t apply, and impact is much harder to explain and quantify. The sector doesn’t provide simple answers, and progress is often slow and time-consuming. This often calls for a significant shift in mindset and a deeper understanding of the social sector’s unique dynamics. Crossover leaders who choose to work in the sector must have a clearer understanding of their values, motivations, and limits to stretching.
ILSS: A Transformative Leadership Journey
Such a transition requires a structured space that can foster reflection, learning, and help build a systemic lens towards the sector. The ILSS Leadership Program is a 9-day immersive experience designed for senior professionals from the private sector who seek to meaningfully engage with the social sector. Blending theory with practice, the Program focuses on both the ‘head’ and the ‘heart’. Leaders are encouraged to think clearly and act with purpose and empathy by embracing approaches that are inclusive, holistic, and sustainable. The participants leave not only with practical tools but also with the clarity and confidence to navigate the complexities of the social sector.
Conclusion
By now, it has been established that the social sector is not just about solving problems; it’s about understanding them deeply. This comes from a conscious work on listening, adapting, and working with the system as it is. This can be challenging and uncertain, but it is also deeply rewarding. It asks us to bring not just our skills, but our whole selves, with clarity, compassion, and courage. As Margaret Mead once said, ‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.’ For those of you who are ready to navigate this complexity with intent, the social sector offers a powerful opportunity to create impact that lasts and to find meaning that truly matters to you.
See you on the other side!
About the Author
Nupur Mahajan has a decade of experience in content creation, training, and facilitation, working across EdTech, Big 4, healthcare, and IT sectors. An entrepreneur at heart, she was a founding team member at Parwarish, leading efforts to unlock human potential. She later worked in both corporate and startup spaces, designing and delivering learning programs for senior women leaders, mid-management, and early talent at Deloitte India Shared Services Pvt. Ltd. As director of learning at Ingenious Faces, she taught a 110-hour design thinking course globally. Nupur holds a master’s in human development and childhood studies (University of Delhi) and is passionate about fostering entrepreneurial mindsets in young talent across India.
