Gautam John

Author: gkjohn

  • When Social Media Was Actually Fun

    Just read Liz Plank’s “Millennials Were The Last Generation to Have it All” and it hit me right in the nostalgia. She captures something essential about 2013-2015 that I’ve been thinking about for a while.

    Remember when social media was actually fun? Before everything became content? When we posted blurry photos with ridiculous captions and nobody was trying to optimise their personal brand?

    Liz calls 2013-2015 “the best two-year stretch in human history” and I’m inclined to agree. It was that sweet spot when technology connected us without consuming us. When being earnest wasn’t yet embarrassing.

    What struck me was how this period coincides with what I observed in my own research on India’s civil society landscape. So many impactful organisations were founded around 2013. Clearly these weren’t just random startups – they were born from that brief window of millennial optimism when structural change felt genuinely possible. Maybe that’s why they’ve lasted. They were created because we believed we could reshape the world for the better.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 7 April 2025. View original →

  • Thirty Days Later…

    … love doesn’t end

     

    Today marks a little over a month since Ella decided it was time to go and we helped her on her way. I thought I had made my peace with it. I thought I was done with the tears. But grief is sneaky. It waits for the quiet moments, for the unexpected reminders.

    This morning, I was in Indiranagar, sitting in my car with a coffee, watching the world go by. Across the road, on top of a short flight of stairs, there was an old white dog. The sun was streaming through the trees, catching her just right, wrapping her in gold. She was trying to get down the stairs, hesitating, her body unwilling in the way old dogs’ bodies sometimes are.

    And it hit me. That hesitation, that particular mix of determination and vulnerability, was exactly how Ella had been in her last days. When the stairs became too much. When getting onto the bed or the sofa wasn’t easy anymore. That quiet struggle, the one that makes you want to wrap them up and hold on forever, even when you know you can’t.

    I was about to get out and help when a man from the restaurant next door walked over with a bowl of food. He crouched down, speaking to her gently, trying to coax her down. She wagged her tail just a little but still couldn’t do it. He tried again and again, and when it was clear that she wasn’t going to make it on her own, he picked her up, carried her down the stairs, and set the food in front of her. She sat and ate, and I just broke down.

    I went over to him and told him how much that meant. He shrugged, smiling. “Bas hamara farz hai.” We just do our duty.

    And maybe that’s what I needed today. A reminder that Ella is still around, still showing me what it means to care and to trust. That even in a world that feels impossibly hard and cruel some days, there are still people who choose kindness. Who instinctively reach out to lift others—human or animal—when they can’t take the steps on their own.

    When I shared this with Shobitha, she reminded me of something I had said a few weeks ago. That I don’t want to get over it. And she understood that feeling. Because sometimes grief connects us to love more sharply than anything else. And oh, how we all miss her.

    But maybe that is the point. Maybe love doesn’t end. Maybe it just changes form, showing up in unexpected places. In an old white dog bathed in sunlight. In the hands of a stranger lifting her down the stairs. In the quiet ache that reminds us of everything we never want to forget.

    Originally published on Substack on 9 March 2025. Read on Substack →

  • Virtuous Capital: The Original Sin of Philanthropy

    Yesterday, I was pointed to this 1997 Harvard Business Review piece titled Virtuous Capital: What Foundations Can Learn from Venture Capitalists. I read it and am calling it “The Original Sin”!

    Thirty years on, it feels like opening a time capsule filled with sharp insights and assumptions that, in hindsight, haven’t aged well.

    The article made a case for philanthropy to borrow from venture capital—longer time horizons, active funder engagement, and a focus on organisational strength rather than just projects. And to be fair, those ideas hold up.

    Three truths from then that remain true today:
    – If funders want lasting impact, they must invest in strong organisations, not just short-term projects.
    – Short funding cycles kill momentum and leave nonprofits scrambling for survival instead of focusing on their mission.
    – The best funders are partners, not just check-writers—and yet, too often, the relationship stays distant, transactional, and burdened with bureaucracy.

    But here’s where the piece shows its age:
    – The idea that philanthropy should model itself after venture capital now feels… let’s say, quaint. In 1997, the VC metaphor was seen as fresh and ambitious. Today, we recognise that complex social challenges don’t follow the logic of moonshot investing. Scale-for-scale’s-sake isn’t always the answer.
    – The power dynamic was barely acknowledged. The article assumes funders should be hands-on “helping” grantees, but today, there’s more awareness that the real work is shifting power, not just optimising nonprofits like portfolio companies.
    – Trust-based, flexible funding wasn’t even in the conversation back then. It’s clearer now that the most effective philanthropy often looks less like a VC term sheet and more like a deep, long-term partnership without rigid, per-determined conditions.

    Some shifts take decades—like moving from rigid, project-based funding to trusting organisations with unrestricted support. What’s something you once thought was a breakthrough idea in philanthropy that now feels…well…less compelling?

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 5 March 2025. View original →

  • Conflict, Not Crisis

    Conflict, not crisis. The distinction matters more than it might seem.

    Crisis suggests a singular event, a problem to be solved and moved past. Conflict, on the other hand, is ongoing, systemic, woven into the fabric of how we live. And that changes everything about how we need to lead.

    For years, the civil society sector has been underfunded, undervalued, and under-supported. Yet time and again, these leaders and organisations have stood as first responders to every sort of challenge. It takes a special kind of leadership to build organisations and movements on unstable ground. And I think what we’re now realizsng is that instability is becoming the default for everyone – whether in government, business, or community work. The skills that civil society leaders have cultivated out of necessity – adaptability, distributed decision-making, trust-based networks – are no longer just for those on the margins. They are the very skills required to navigate the world as it is now.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 1 March 2025. View original →

  • How The Matrix Changed How I Think About Change

    Because sometimes it takes a movie to see reality more clearly

     

    I was staring at an email from an old colleague: “I am now a consultant with a global consulting firm focused on implementing system-level changes across energy, nature and food, materials, urban areas, and finance.”

    I had to smile. System-level changes. We throw that phrase around a lot in my field. But what does it really mean? I was mulling this over in yet another meeting about “systemic transformation” when something clicked. Not about consulting frameworks or theory of change models, but about The Matrix. Not the surface-level “we’re living in a simulation” part, but something deeper.

    Remember that scene where Neo first “wakes up”? He thinks that’s the whole story – escape the fake world, find the real one. But it turns out that’s just the beginning. The real journey is learning to work with both realities at once.

    That’s when it clicked for me. In my years of working on social change, we keep trying to find the “real” problem to solve. Is it poverty? Education? Healthcare? Systems? Individual choices? But what if, like Neo, we’re asking the wrong question?

    A Different Way of Seeing

    Here’s what I’ve come to understand: Reality works on multiple levels at once. The Matrix shows this beautifully – there’s the physical world of Zion, the constructed reality of the Matrix, and the deeper realm where consciousness and technology merge. Each is real in its own way. Each matters.

    Last year, I was working with a community group tackling food insecurity. We started with the obvious – getting food to people who need it. That’s the Zion level – immediate, physical, crucial. But then we had to deal with the “Matrix” level – the policies, systems, and structures that create food deserts in the first place. And beneath that was something even deeper – the beliefs and assumptions we all hold about food, community, and responsibility.

    Beyond Either/Or

    “What I’m seeing now isn’t the Matrix – it’s the way into it,” Neo says at one point. That line keeps coming back to me. Because every time I think I’ve figured out “the real problem,” I realise it’s just one layer of something bigger.

    Take the project I’m working on now. We started out thinking we had to choose between supporting individual families and changing policy. But that’s like choosing between Zion and the Matrix – it misses the point entirely. The magic happens when we work across all these levels at once.

    What Actually Works

    The other day, someone asked me what I’ve learned about creating real change. I told them to imagine they’re Neo learning to fly. At first, he has to consciously break all the rules he thinks are real. But eventually, he sees the truth – there were never any rules to break. Just different levels of reality to work with.

    That’s what effective change work feels like now. Sometimes I’m dealing with immediate needs – that’s essential, like the resistance fighting to protect Zion. Sometimes I’m working to change systems – like hacking the Matrix. And sometimes I’m pushing for deeper transformation – like Neo negotiating with the machines.

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  • India Civic Summit 2025 — Closing Address

    Closing address at the India Civic Summit 2025, hosted by Citizen Matters and Oorvani Foundation.

    Gautam John, CEO of Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies, rounded off the India Civic Summit 2025 with this closing address.

    Transcript

    This transcript was generated with AI-assisted transcription and may contain occasional transcription or speaker-attribution errors.

    To conclude this session as well as the India Civic Summit 2025, I will invite Mr. Gautam John to come and talk to all of us and leave us with some of his thoughts on active citizenry in general. Gautam John is the CEO of Rohini Nilkani Philanthropies. Prior to this, he has spent several years with the Akshara Foundation building the Karnataka Learning Partnership and at Pratham Books.

    He was also a TED India Fellow in 2009. Gautam, please take the stage.

    I apologize for those of you who were expecting Rohini needs me. I am neither as smart nor as wise, but I will try and channel her wisdom. Second, they promised me I would start the session.

    Now I have to speak after Dr. Narayanan and after all of this amazing work that happens in these cities, so no pressure. But I do want to say that for a philanthropy whose entire reason for being is based on the idea of Samaj being foundational, to recognize the raw energy, passion, talent and interest and care that this room represents is both humbling but also deeply inspiring. To say that Samaj is foundational and to say that citizens must co-create solutions and to say that citizens must participate in governance is almost glib because this is what it takes to do it.

    It takes patience, it takes perseverance. Sorry, I was recording this and then I decided to. It takes patience, perseverance and a whole lot of grit in the face of immense structural challenges to hold fast to this work.

    And if you will forgive my language, I just want to say thank you for giving a shit. Because this work isn’t easy like Dr. Narayanan said, like many of you acknowledge, this work isn’t easy. It’s often thankless and it’s almost always, how to say, invisible.

    And it’s not always easy trying to be the invisible infrastructure that makes citizens, citizenry and cities work. It’s not often easy to be invisible and not thanked, not recognized. But I do want to say it’s what moves all of us forward.

    Like we saw the amazing examples of the organizations from Bangalore, Chennai and Mumbai and across the country, it’s this spirit and this latent interest in what keeps us together as a society that moves us forward. And what I do want to say is really that we as a philanthropy, but also we as citizens recognize that this work matters and your work matters. Every effort, no matter how small, has a way of expanding beyond what we can see.

    And while Gandhi may have never said, be the change you want to see, it’s true that change ripples from inside out, not necessarily from outside in. Change doesn’t happen because someone grants it from above. It happens because people like you insist that it happens from the ground up.

    Thank you for your commitment, your energy and for proving that the most powerful solutions often start with the samaj. Thank you very much and thank you to the Uruwani Foundation for holding this space for all of us, all of you, and for doing it year on year. I look forward to next year.

    Thank you.

    Originally published by Citizen Matters on 24 February 2025. View on YouTube →

  • The Journey of Systems Change

    What I’ve Learned About How Change Really Happens

     

    I used to think change happened to me. When I first started this work, everything felt reactive. Systems were broken, resources were scarce, and problems seemed external. Like many of us, I tried to make sense of it all by creating structure.

    So we designed programs. You know the kind – structured, measurable, outcome-driven. They looked good in presentations. They made great grant applications. But something was always missing. The programs helped people, sure, but they rarely touched the deeper conditions that made them necessary in the first place.

    That led me to projects. More flexible, easier to adapt. We could experiment, try new things, respond to what we were learning. But no matter how well they worked, scaling felt like pushing a boulder uphill. Each success stayed small, isolated, contained.

    I remember sitting in a meeting, surrounded by data showing how well our latest project was working, and feeling this nagging sense that we were missing something bigger. That’s when we started exploring partnerships. If individual projects struggled to grow, maybe working together with aligned organizations could create greater impact. We shared learning, pooled resources, built on each other’s strengths.

    But partnerships had their own limits. They depended heavily on existing relationships and often got stuck in institutional constraints. We were working alongside each other, but not really transforming how we worked.

    That insight led us to collaboratives – not just working near each other, but truly integrating our efforts. Bringing organizations and leaders together in ways that went beyond coordination. The work became more responsive, more adaptive. But even then, we were still operating within structures that weren’t designed for long-term systems change.

    Then I started thinking about platforms. Instead of pushing change from the center, what if we could create spaces where change could emerge from anywhere? Platforms opened up participation, letting more people contribute instead of just receiving. But here’s what I learned the hard way: platforms can scale access, but they can’t scale trust. And trust, I was beginning to see, was everything.

    That realization shifted my focus to trust-based funding. Moving away from short-term grants with rigid deliverables to investing in people, relationships, and movements over time. Letting communities lead their own change. It felt scary at first – harder to measure, harder to control. But the results went deeper than anything we’d seen before.

    Which brought me, finally, to understanding systems change as fundamentally relational work. Systems don’t shift through interventions alone. They shift through trust that lets people imagine new possibilities together. Through networks that make action possible at scale. Through the slow, patient work of changing norms, behaviors, and culture.

    Looking back, I see this wasn’t just about trying different methods – it was about fundamentally shifting how I understood my own role in change. I moved from reacting (things happening to me) to taking ownership (creating change by me). From designing solutions alone to co-creating them with others. And finally, to understanding that my job isn’t to control change but to hold space for it to emerge through me.

    Each stage felt necessary at the time. I had to build programs to see their limits. I had to design platforms to understand their gaps. I had to learn to trust before I could truly let go.

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  • Ella

    Lady Sniffs A Lot

     

    Ella had been sniffing around the flower pots again, her nose buried in the damp soil, inhaling deeply before scooping up a mouthful of mud and chewing with quiet determination.

    I knelt beside her, brushing the dirt off her muzzle. “Ella,” I sighed, half amused, half concerned. “We have actual food, you know.”

    She looked up at me, unbothered, her tail thumping weakly against the floor. But something about the way she held herself—the stiffness in her limbs, the slow blink of her eyes—told me this wasn’t just a quirk. It was something deeper.

    For thirteen years, she had been our shadow, our constant, our Lady Sniffs A Lot. Now, at almost fourteen, her body was telling us what she couldn’t.

    The vet confirmed what I already feared. Her platelet count was dangerously low, her haemoglobin was dropping, and her liver—long a source of unpredictable readings—was likely destroying more than it was helping. Supplements weren’t making a dent. Maybe, the vet suggested, a blood transfusion or a hormone injection to stimulate blood production.

    I sat with this, turning the options over in my head. Would a transfusion buy us time? A few days? A week? And even if it did—for what? The broader trajectory was clear. The kind thing might not be to fight but to listen.

    And yet.

    Yet, when you love someone, even in their twilight, you grasp at the things that could bring them comfort, even fleetingly. So we tried the hormone injections, the iron supplements. And for a while, she held on.

    Until the evening when her back legs gave out beneath her.

    She tried to stand, paws slipping on the floor, her body refusing to follow her will. I caught her before she fully collapsed, her breath warm against my hand.

    She was tired.

    We had thought we would know when it was time. That there would be a moment of certainty, a clear line between “not yet” and “now.” But instead, it felt like wading through fog, each step heavy with doubt.

    The vet could try a transfusion. It might give her a few more days. But at what cost to her? Were we keeping her here for her, or were we holding on for us?

    We thought about how she had lived—not just the years, but the way she had filled them. She had run, chased, sniffed, explored. She had slept in the sun, demanded belly rubs, stolen food from unattended plates. She had lived fully, without hesitation.

    It wasn’t just about how much time she had left. It was about the kind of time.

    So we let her go.

    At home, in her space, with Sparky lying beside her—her best friend, her companion for thirteen years. There was no fear in her eyes, only quiet trust. She had always known how to be present in a way we humans struggle to master. Even at the end, she was teaching us.

    It was peaceful.

    She was gone.

    In the days after, the house felt impossibly empty. And yet, her absence was loud—the missing rhythm of her paws, the space where she used to curl up, the way Sparky sniffed the air as if searching for her.

    (more…)

  • From Love Not Log Frames to Connection Not Abstraction

    In 2021, I wrote “Love, not log frames,” a piece inspired by watching civil society step up during the pandemic. It called for greater trust and empathy in giving.

    Four years later, I see something deeper. In this new piece for India Development Review (IDR), “Connection, not abstraction,” I’m grappling with how real change happens. Yes, trust matters, and yes, unrestricted funding is crucial. But I’m learning that our role in philanthropy isn’t to design solutions at all but to create spaces where communities can connect, belong, and lead their transformation.

    What excites me is seeing how many of us are converging on similar insights from different paths. Whether it’s the Centre for Exponential Change’s work, Blue Ribbon Movement, Einhorn Collaborative, Agami’s experiments in justice making, Rakesh Rajani’s vision at Just Systems, what TIAL (The Institutional Architecture Lab) is working on, Brian Stout’s community of Building Belonging, Kshetra Foundation for Dialogue, or Socratus Collective Wisdom Corporation’s innovations – we’re all circling these fundamental truths about connection and emergence. In many ways, we’re rediscovering what Margaret Wheatley and others have long taught us about how living systems work and change emerges.

    I owe this evolution in thinking to so many people and places and wisdom-carriers like john powell. Their stories and insights teach me that the most powerful solutions aren’t the ones we can package and scale—they’re the ones that emerge when people find each other and create together.

    Originally written for LinkedIn on 19 January 2025. View original →

  • Connection, not abstraction: Rethinking philanthropy for social change

    Philanthropy’s most important role is not to abstract solutions by distilling them into replicable frameworks. It is to nurture the connections that make them possible.

    The cool November air in Pune carried the aroma of chai, mingling with the low hum of conversation and occasional laughter in the foyer of the Global Opportunity Youth Network (GOYN) Global Convening. This gathering of youth leaders, philanthropists, and practitioners had been buzzing with energy all day, but now the crowd was quieter and more reflective. American law professor and civil rights scholar John Powell had just delivered a keynote that left everyone thinking.

    “Belonging isn’t about inclusion,” he had said. “It’s about co-creation—about creating the systems where everyone can thrive together.”

    I lingered on the edges, mulling over his words. Around me, opportunity youth leaders spoke animatedly, sharing their experiences of navigating systemic barriers and reimagining futures. Alejandra, a young leader from Colombia, recounted how her community had rallied to co-create a youth innovation fund. “The fund goes beyond money,” she explained. “It’s a way for us to invest in one another’s ideas, to show that our creativity and solutions matter.”

    Change emerges when communities lead

    Alejandra’s words crystallised a realisation I’d been circling for years: Change is not something we deliver to communities—it’s something that emerges when communities lead. Her story was echoed by Nandita, an artist-activist from India, who shared how her initiative to revive the Warli painting tradition had grown into a movement connecting tribal youth with global audiences. “It’s not about preserving art in a museum,” she said. “It’s about living it, evolving it, and letting it speak to today’s struggles.”

    Both stories reflected a shift from prescriptive solutions to systemic transformation rooted in identity and agency. These youth-led efforts focused not on extracting abstract lessons or scaling a fixed model but on weaving connections, fostering belonging, and enabling environments where communities could thrive on their own terms.

    This tension—between abstraction and connection—was the thread John had pulled at, challenging my assumptions about how change happens.

    The programme trap

    In philanthropy, it is easy to think in terms of programmes and singular solutions. The logic is clean, almost comforting: Define a problem, design a solution, and measure its impact. For years, we donors have funded initiatives that followed this model across education, health, sanitation and other areas. But time and again, we encountered the same limitation—no single intervention could meaningfully shift outcomes in a complex, interconnected system.

    Take the example of education. We have poured resources into teacher training, remedial education, and curriculum enhancements, believing these would improve learning outcomes. But these efforts didn’t account for the realities outside the classroom. Hungry children couldn’t concentrate; anxious children couldn’t thrive. Teachers were overwhelmed by challenges that no amount of professional development alone could solve. The strands of nutrition, mental health, infrastructure, and community support were deeply interwoven. Addressing one issue in isolation unravelled others.

    This programmatic approach had a second, subtler flaw: abstraction. When we tried to replicate success by distilling it into frameworks, we froze something dynamic into a static snapshot—a moment in time divorced from the ongoing evolution of the work. The problem isn’t just that abstraction simplifies; it also misrepresents.

    When intermediaries step in to codify and distribute learnings, they often capture a single version of the work at a particular moment in its evolution. But the work itself continues to change, informed by new challenges, insights, and relationships. These static frameworks, though widely distributed, fail to reflect the dynamic nature of the work and risk reinforcing outdated approaches.

    What we need isn’t a better intermediary or a sharper snapshot. We need spaces and venues where people with common values can find each other, forge deep personal connections, exchange ideas, co-learn in real time, and co-create enduring solutions. For social change to occur, it is relationships that must serve as the scaffolding for growth. This relational foundation is not a secondary feature; it is the essence of meaningful, adaptive change.

    The shift to connection

    John’s keynote articulated something I had sensed but was struggling to name: the distinction between ‘bridging’ and ‘breaking’ solutions. ‘Breaking’ solutions separate ideas from their origins, freezing them in time. ‘Bridging’, on the other hand, creates spaces where stories, ideas, and relationships flow freely, evolving as they connect with new contexts.

    This shift from abstraction to connection isn’t theoretical. It’s already happening. The 24×7 ON Court initiative in Kollam, spearheaded by the Kerala High Court and supported by the nonprofit mission PUCAR, is a promising example of how trust and alignment can fuel collaboration.

    A collective of lawyers, technologists, and policymakers, PUCAR is working to unstick a justice system bogged down by outdated processes and inefficiencies. Their goal is to make dispute resolution faster, fairer, and more accessible for everyone. The 24×7 ON Court in Kollam, India’s first fully digital court, is one example of this vision in action. The court handles cheque dishonour cases entirely online, enabling litigants to file cases, attend hearings, and receive judgements without stepping into a courtroom.

    Though still in its early days, the initiative has already seen strong participation from the local bar association. Far from being a centrally orchestrated roll-out, the project has been a collaborative, co-created effort. Lawyers at the bar association have taken ownership and are not only implementing the system but also actively contributing to its evolution. Their inputs—ranging from practical tools such as payment calculators and drafting templates to systemic process improvements—have enhanced the platform’s relevance and responsiveness.

    The high court’s leadership in setting the stage, combined with the bar association’s stewardship, has allowed this initiative to develop as a relational ecosystem—one where tools and processes are refined through connection, dialogue, and shared purpose. This isn’t a top-down roll-out masked as collaboration; it’s a genuinely co-created ecosystem in which the focus is on trust and working towards a shared purpose. Instead of imposing solutions, the different actors are focused on constant dialogue and iteration. The lawyers are more than just users of the system—they are stewards who are refining the platform so that it fits the real needs of their community.

    While much remains to be seen, early signs suggest that when trust and ownership intersect, innovation can take root in ways that are both meaningful and enduring.

    Belonging as a systemic lens

    At the GOYN convening, I witnessed the principle of connection in action. Rather than being passive recipients of interventions, opportunity youth leaders were co-creators of solutions deeply rooted in their own communities. Whether tackling unemployment, education, or mental health, these young leaders were not building programmes but ecosystems of support.

    For example, in Mexico City, young people worked with more than 90 institutions to push for inclusive employment policies. The intention was to go beyond job placements and build a network of public, private, and civil society partners committed to creating real pathways to meaningful livelihoods.

    This, I realised, was the essence of John’s idea of belonging: co-creating systems where everyone feels seen, valued, and empowered to contribute. Belonging isn’t something you can deliver through a single intervention. It is the foundation of systemic change, the thread that ties individual outcomes to collective transformation.

    John’s call to create systems where belonging is a design principle invites us to broaden our understanding of orchestration. Orchestration refers to the coordination and management of multiple components, programmes, and stakeholders in the service of achieving a common impact goal. Effective systems orchestration, while critical, can risk becoming overly reliant on abstraction if it loses sight of the people and relationships at its core.

    To catalyse transformation, we must pair orchestration with a deep commitment to the messiness of human connection, the unpredictability of relationships, and the humility of shared learning. This balance allows us to build systems that are not brittle frameworks but resilient networks—forests capable of weathering any storm. Belonging, therefore, isn’t just a moral imperative; it’s a practical one.

    Philanthropy’s role in connection

    For philanthropy, this committing to connection means moving beyond prescriptive approaches. It requires trust, humility, and a willingness to relinquish control; letting communities lead, and paving the way for solutions to emerge organically. The challenge lies in navigating the shift from linear, programmatic approaches to non-linear, systemic change.

    John’s concept of targeted universalism offers a way forward. It starts with a universal goal—such as equitable education or dignified livelihoods—but acknowledges that different communities require different pathways to reach it.

    For philanthropy to embrace this shift, it needs to rethink its role entirely. Instead of designing and deploying solutions, it must become a facilitator of connection. Here’s what this involves:

    • Investing in ecosystems: Supporting the holistic conditions that allow communities to thrive, rather than having a narrow focus on isolated outcomes. For instance, in the city of Mombasa in Kenya, youth leaders avoided quick fixes for unemployment. Instead, they co-created initiatives such as the County Revolving Fund and ICT hubs, building an ecosystem that combined skills training, government partnerships, and long-term economic support.
    • Creating collision spaces: Building platforms for practitioners, community members, and youth leaders to share, adapt, and evolve insights. At Rohini Nilekani Philanthropies (RNP), we’ve seen this in action through convenings designed as containers for connection. At a recent retreat, we avoided packed schedules, allowing unhurried, iterative dialogue where participants—not intermediaries—shaped the conversation. Insights from day one dynamically informed day two discussions, fostering a network of ideas and relationships that remained alive and adaptive long after the event.
    • Trusting the process: Accepting that systemic change is non-linear and unpredictable, and that the best solutions often emerge from the ground up.

    A vision for belonging

    John’s call to action at the GOYN convening was to create systems where everyone belongs. Philanthropy has the power to catalyse this kind of belonging, but it requires a leap of faith. It means stepping back from the comfort of frameworks and into the uncertainty of human relationships. It means seeing communities not as beneficiaries but as collaborators. And it means understanding that the best solutions are co-created, not prescribed.

    As the convening wound down, I observed Alejandra animatedly exchanging ideas with Nandita, their conversation flowing effortlessly between laughter and deep intent. Around them, other youth leaders, funders, and practitioners lingered, chai in hand, their discussions unhurried and vibrant. The scene felt alive—a living ecosystem where connections, rather than outcomes, were the driving force.

    This, I realised, is what connection looks like. Not abstraction, not a framework, but a dynamic, evolving web of relationships. And in that moment, I understood that philanthropy’s most important role is not to abstract solutions, but to nurture the connections that make them possible.

    Originally published at India Development Review on 16 January 2025.