Belonging - an imperative for the world.

Social Venture Partners, which started with a desire to apply venture capital principles to the social sector has now blossomed beyond venture philanthropy to be established as a true social differentiator in many parts of world. There are remarkable similarities in approach and also significant differences in the way three thousand plus partners in over fifty cites across twelve countries have visualized the positive change they can visualize and implement. SVP is today showing all the signs of being one of the most positive forces of good in the world – a movement which can inspire, unite and most important enable a genuine feeling of belonging!

There were moments of reflection and epiphany in plenty for many of us partners, who participated in the recent Vancouver global summit. A powerful keynote by Professor John Powell, Director of the Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society at the University of California in Berkeley dwelt on the theme of “Othering and Belonging” and his words resonated, not just with the predominantly Caucasian audience at the summit but also with the teams from Asian countries as well as African Americans and Latinos who found enough applicability in our context to for his ideas for social change.

We live in a world where labelling some parts of humanity as “others” have become a way of life. We are all guilty in thought and action of looking at some people, animals, and sometimes even the planet as others, entities which are not an integral part of us and could either cause us harm or would need to be pitied or financially supported by us through charity. While in some parts of the Western world, “othering” has led to decades of racial inequity, in India we are seeing inequities amongst social classes, caste, communities and even gender which have led to deep fissures in society. There is a power dynamic involved in othering that we have to pay deep attention to. It emerges from a tendency to view many others as “not like us” and a deep-rooted sense of superiority in who we are and what we represent. Even words like charity and inclusion are limiting in the sense that they start from an assumed position of superiority of the person who wants to be good to the other. We need to free ourselves from this explicit or inherent tendency towards othering which is so embedded in our thinking and language that it becomes a limitation to what we can accomplish in a social context.

The benefits of building “safe spaces” where everyone can be at harmony with their own persona and engage with all other participants in a learning journey and eventually become one with the community to which they belong have been explored in all our cities and none better than one of the first entities that SVP India invested in, Pune City Connect. Through a theory of change that encompasses a cycle of agency building, counselling, skills development and livelihood assistance, this entity is working with thousands of slum youth through the “Lighthouses of Pune”, entities set up through a unique collaboration between city corporations, local Government and civil society. With five lighthouses already in place and ten more envisaged in the city in phases, some of us, who have had the privilege of co-creating the lighthouse idea four years ago take pride in its recognition as a social innovator in the National Smart City initiative and as India’s chosen program for change by two international think tanks. We are delighted to share and advocate the model with others who want to make similar magic happen elsewhere in India and the world. In this and several scaling programs led by the partners of SVP India, we are experiencing the joy that comes only when the youth of a community, long made to feel as “others”  feel empowered to dream, choose what they want to do and also find the path to attain their goals and truly belong in the ranks of the city’s vibrant value creators.

There is much more to be done, in India to move beyond the Pavlovian murmurs of approval that philanthropic ideas evoke to robust advances in our million jobs agenda, and worldwide in the efforts to attain the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals that seek to build a fairer and more inclusive world where everybody can truly “belong”. At Social Venture Partners, there is a vibrancy in our seven cities which gives all of us hope that we are on the right track but there is so much to be done in a country of our size and diversity that we cannot rest on our initial successes and need to surge forward in our worthy cause.

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Dr Ganesh Natarajan is Chairman of Social Venture Partners India