Lead by Design

Education is supposed to inspire young people to equip them to work, to earn a living, and to help solve the great challenges in their villages, their country, and the world. The problem is, mainstream public education in India today stifles creativity and fails to prepare young people for work or life. 80% of children in India receive no hands-on ‘experiential learning’—a rote education leaves many of them bored and doubting the value of school. 40% of them drop out of high school. That’s because the basic lesson they’ve learned is that their ideas don’t matter. The World Economic Forum reports that only 20% of Indian youth are employable; meanwhile, India is on track to become one of a handful of countries to have a majority working-age population by the year 2030. These trends—substandard education, an explosion in the working-age population, and ever-more-urgent challenges facing the world—put India on a collision course for the future. But there is a way forward. Experiential learning puts an emphasis on creativity, exploration, co-creation and collaboration—the very same qualities that young people need to thrive, that India needs to boost its economy, and that the world needs to address the urgent challenges of disease, violence, inequality, and climate change. Hence, we at Lead by Design envision that when children tap into their creative potential to solve real world challenges around them, they develop the necessary skills and mindsets to become self-reliant by 2030.