‘We didn’t want a tokenistic, prescriptive approach to including young people in our mission.’
In 2018 Reap Benefit formed it’s first ever Youth Board — a group of young people who had shown exceptional grit, persistence and commitment to solving real world, local issues. As our first Youth Board prepares to hand over the baton to its successors, Reap Benefit co-founder Kuldeep Dantewadia reflects on the origins of this unique board of young people, for young people.
Reap Benefit’s mission is to build civic muscle in young people to solve real-world, local issues. Over the years, as we worked with more and more Solve Ninjas (which is what we call our community), the team thought about what we meant when we said ‘young people should be supported’. We realised that such support is often viewed through a future lens and not a present lens.
Yes, young people are the future, but they’re also right here, right now.
And we wanted to build a framework of support that was rooted in the here and now. Also, young people are equal stakeholders in our organisation. We didn’t want a tokenistic, prescriptive approach that was in name only.
When we talk about an organisation’s board of advisors there’s a certain sanctity and formality associated with it. So the idea of a Youth Board that would have an equal say in how the mission would grow, what Reap Benefit as an organisation should be and what decisions we might take grew.
We always knew that the growth of Reap Benefit’s mission was going to be through a community led model rather than Reap Benefit trying to be a big, powerful entity that did everything. The Youth Board was our first exercise in exploring this collaborative community model with like minded people.
First innings
Our first Youth Board was formed in 2018. As an organisation, we wanted the Youth Board to ask us tough questions, keep a check to see if we were walking the talk and to contribute ideas, co-create products and take positions of responsibility. In return, our promise was to provide mentoring, create opportunities and help them build their own organisations when the time came.
We started with a cohort of 17 people, but knew at the outset there would be drop outs and were prepared for that.
Today, two years later we have 12 person strong Youth Board with diverse interests, skills and abilities, united by their affinity for public problem solving.
Two way street
The Youth Board has always been ready to extend both their support and let us know what they aren’t happy with. In fact, it was the Youth Board who drew our attention to the fact that our communication efforts weren’t cutting it, which made us look at restructuring the team and getting outside help to improve how we presented our work to the outside world. In fact, Youth Board member Deepika Aiyer came on board to help drive this change herself.
The Youth Board has been part of internal debates on whether the organisation should scale or focus on deepening our work with smaller communities, with members arguing for both schools of thought. In fact, in 2019, at our leadership retreat representatives from the Youth Board were part of discussions that helped shaped strategy.
Next generation social entrepreneurs
Many of our youth board members have gone on to start initiatives and organisations of their own.
Vibha Nadig’s OutLawed bolsters citizen engagement with the law through grass-roots level legal education.
Shriya Shankar has been working with underserved young girls through her Project Sitara Foundation.
Pranaay Parekh founded Art for a Cause. Taanika Shankar is part of Yugma Network, a pan India initiative that was instrumental in bringing together young people from across the country to protest the draft EIA.
Vibish Kashyap’s Reform Trails works with young people to enhance their social and emotional learning through problem solving.
Youth board members like Surbhi have mentored new Solve Ninjas, while Namya Sinha helped set up our chapter model that enables young people from different parts of the country to start problem solving circles in their learning communities. Pallavi Madhukar has built solutions with us, while Sidharth Santosh has participated in a number of civic initiatives and written research papers based that feature the work we do.
We’re immensely proud that these young people have represented us at various national and international gatherings. Sidharth was at the Hundred.org summit in Finland, Shriya attended a UNICEF event in Delhi on our behalf, Deepta Bharadwaj was part of our team that attended a Teach for All conference in Armenia while Youth Board Members have become key participants and contributors to Teach For India’s KER conference.
It’s amazing to see how this group of youngsters has grown into a closely knit group of experts — campaigners, policy wonks, activists, #techforgood evangelists and builders.
Our Youth Board has been a source of inspiration for many and we’ve shared the model with other organisations like Antarang Foundation and Janaagraha.
Going forward the Youth Board will play an important role in building, engaging with and mentoring solver communities across the country while continuing to work with and challenge us along the way. It’s something I, and the entire Reap Benefit team looks forward to.
