Building an Inclusive, Sustainable & Resilient Social Impact Sector for the Future

Arthan, a social enterprise that provides capacity building support to social sector organisations, is launching a long term, future-oriented and multi-stakeholder initiative, ‘Building Civil Society Organisations of the Future’. This online to offline initiative begins with a track on ‘The Future of Fundraising’ on June 22, 2020, bringing together a mix of international and Indian donor organisations such as The MacArthur Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Michael & Susan Dell Foundation and Ford Foundation, amongst many others. Other tracks include: Future of Jobs (25th and 26th June), Future of Education (3rd July) and Women’s Leadership in the Development Sector (14th July), Urban Cities (30th and 31st July)

The pandemic brought forth the spirit of collaboration of the social sector with a plethora of online convenings and other collaborations and collectives. However, a few questions remained unaddressed. These range from the need for a long term, sustainable and resilient strategy for the impact sector that would include the voices of all stakeholders in the sector – across regions, languages and gender to ensuring accountability by converting these dialogues into action. This initiative will address ecosystem challenges and opportunities, in the wake of the pandemic, in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals, progress towards which has been pushed back due to these unforeseen circumstances. The initiative, which will run from June 2020 to December 2021, is meant to co-create solutions, co-evolve out of the pandemic, and define the future of civil society organisations in India.

The pandemic laid bare the inefficiencies of our healthcare systems and illustrated the lack of preparedness for a crisis of this magnitude, failing our fellow humans, migrant families, who could have been treated with greater dignity and justice, had we prepared better for this disaster. As the lockdowns end and unlocks begin, we need to be better equipped to ensure our societal and economic goals work in tandem and address the need for respectable jobs for all.

The conference will bring together experts, practitioners, and thought leaders from across the impact sector, private sector and government to address key issues in streams including but not limited to urban planning, agriculture & migration, gender, education, violence against women, farmer distress, child protection and the role of the civil society & government, that have been irrevocably affected and need pivoting and strengthening in these times of COVID-19 and the years to come.  This constantly evolving universe will bring together 3000 speakers and build the capacity of 10,000 civil society organisations across sectors, over the next two years. Audiences will include NGOs, practitioners, leaders, job seekers, academicians and many more.

Satyam Vyas, founder & CEO, Arthan says, “The world is reeling under a pandemic and question marks have been placed on the future – of individuals, organisations, countries and the world economy. Conversations about scripting a new normal have become the norm. But we have to script the new normal now, and define it for the next decade if we want to achieve the development goals .”

And with thought, this social impact initiative will have leaders, who have been driving transformational change in civil society, come together to create a collaborative of those working towards accelerating progress, creating a space for dialogue and actionable steps. Through various formats such as panel discussions, masterclasses and roundtables, the virtual conference series will stress upon the need of reimagining the areas of financial management, fundraising, talent management, communication and technology to help the social impact sector pivot in a way that not only allows for organisational continuity but also for organisations to stay on their path of creating long term and sustainable impact.

In the first phase from June-October 2020, Arthan is convening this ecosystem where all social sector leaders voice their opinion, in their languages – leaders who have ‘walked the talk’ time and again and who can guide the sector to move towards the right direction. Some of the notable names include Moutushi Sengupta, MacArthur Foundation; Deepali Khanna, The Rockefeller Foundation; Yamini Aiyar, Centre for Policy Research; Dr Rukmini Banerjee, Pratham; Ashif Shaikh, Jan Sahas; Shrikanth Viswanath, Janaagraha among a long list of more than 200 speakers. The convenings and sessions that are a part of this long term initiative, will be open to people from around the world and will have sessions based on a freemium model.

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