Ivy House recently joined its charity partner, Global Fund for Children (GFC), on a learning tour in Kolkata, India, to explore how community-led initiatives are driving meaningful and lasting change.
The visit, attended by Ivy House’s Emmi Anderson, formed part of GFC’s immersive programme designed to give partners first-hand insight into the impact of grassroots organisations working across the region.
Over five days, Emmi and others met with community leaders, young people and local organisations to see how change is being led from within communities themselves. The experience highlighted the power of confidence, ownership and local leadership in shaping sustainable solutions.
This reinforced something we truly believe in: meaningful change rarely happens to people – it grows when individuals build confidence and take ownership to shape their own future.
Why Global Fund for Children?
Our passion for supporting young people has been part of Ivy House’s DNA from the beginning. From providing free resources to schools through The Future Leaders Project to helping 15–18 year olds learn executive level skills through The Ivy House Award, empowering the next generation is central to who we are. That’s why partnering with Global Fund for Children makes perfect sense.
GFC invests in grassroots organisations worldwide that support vulnerable children and youth. Their work spans education, gender justice, safety, youth leadership, climate resilience, and emergency relief. They specialise in reaching the small, community-led organisations that larger funders often overlook – the very groups closest to the challenges and therefore closest to the answers.
Kolkata: A firsthand look at community-led leadership
The Kolkata tour brought together supporters, local leaders, and young people across West Bengal to explore GFC’s Addressing Root Causes (ARC) Initiative, a community-driven approach focused on the underlying conditions that put children at risk.
Across visits to grassroots organisations, Emmi and the group encountered the same recurring theme:
Ownership drives change.
In community after community, people, including children, spoke with an astonishing sense of agency. They weren’t waiting to be rescued. They weren’t waiting for permission. They were leading, collaborating, and creating solutions because that’s what was needed.
The ARC Initiative supports this through methodologies like SALT conversations (Support, Appreciate, Listen, Learn, Team & Transfer), which is essentially a coaching methodology, and the Community Life Competence Process. These approaches empower communities to name the challenges they want to solve and mobilise collective action to address them. This shifts the power dynamic from “programme delivery” to “community ownership”.
A partnership that mirrors Ivy House’s purpose
What Emmi witnessed in Kolkata reinforced something we already knew: that leadership is not a title – it’s a mindset and a way of behaving, and often the most transformational leadership comes from unexpected places.
In every community we visited, young people were analysing problems, convening groups, making decisions, sharing stories, and driving action. They were modelling the very behaviours we work to cultivate in organisations:
- Clarity of purpose
- Courage to challenge norms
- Responsibility for outcomes
- Collaborating across difference
- Belief in their ability to lead
When these qualities root themselves in a community, performance shifts, not from compliance to resistance, but from compliance to ownership.
Our partnership with GFC is more than philanthropy. It is a shared commitment to:
- Invest in potential, not prescriptions.
- Address root causes, not symptoms.
- Build agency, not dependency.
- Support leaders at every age, in every context.
Kolkata didn’t just deepen our admiration for GFC. it challenged us to keep evolving the way we think about change, leadership, and impact.
Because whether in a rural Indian village or a global organisation, the principle stays the same:
People closest to the challenge must own the solution. And when they do, change not only happens – it lasts.