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SDG Awards 2024

Finalist Profile

Welcome to the SDG Awards, a distinguished recognition program honoring the remarkable contributions of individuals, organizations, and initiatives in championing the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Finalist Profile

Labhya

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LABHYA
About Company
  • Company Type: Non-Profit Organization
  • Founded in 2017
  • Located at India
  • Employees: 11-50

SDG Awards 2024

Category - SDG 4 - Quality Education
Voting Portal

Provides Social-Emotional Learning Programs (SELP) to over 2.4 million children across India.

➜ Provides Social-Emotional Learning Programs (SELP) to over 2.4 million children across India.
➜ Collaborations: Partners with governments and NGOs to scale SELP to underserved communities.
➜ Digital SEL Solutions: Develops digital solutions to make SEL accessible globally, enhancing educational outcomes
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1. What is the local impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

Labhya is an India-based nonprofit that enables children from low socio-economic backgrounds with the necessary social & emotional skills to cope with poverty and become effective learners. Founded in 2017, Labhya has been supported by Harvard University, French Government, USA government, DRK Foundation, Mulago Foundation, LSE, UNICEF, and Selena Gomez's Rare Impact Fund among other organisations. Labhya partners with Indian state governments to co-create and ensure effective implementation of a state-wide daily mental health & wellbeing class that is integrated into the school day. We have co-created and are ensuring effective implementation of the world’s largest and India’s first at-scale wellbeing programs. Currently, our programs are ensuring that 2.4 million vulnerable children across 3 states of India are able to cope and become healthy, effective learners. Labhya achieves its mission by integrating Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) into the public education systems in India. To ensure the scale and sustainability of its programs, Labhya partners with local state governments to co-create and ensure the effective implementation of a state-wide daily SEL class. Just as children attend regular maths and science classes, they now also have a dedicated SEL and wellbeing class integrated into their school day. There is a clear alignment of interests among teachers and governments, wherein both want students to cope with challenges and learn better. However, there is an expertise gap in what needs to be done & how that is missing in the system. Labhya is addressing this gap by mobilising existing resources, time and structures in the state’s public education system in order to introduce Social Emotional Learning to all young girls and boys equitably. Our long-standing partnerships with state governments serve as a proof of concept for our approach and are crucial in pushing mental health and well-being to the forefront of policy discussions in India. The visible on-ground impact and our ongoing journey in evidence generation are paving the way for scaling our programs to more states and nationally, reducing significant barriers to demand for well-being programs at the systemic level. Over the years, we have translated classrooms into emotionally safe spaces, where underserved children acquire the necessary skills that lead to increased learning motivation, improved resilience, better relationship skills, improved mental health and well-being and hence being able to learn effectively. We have co-created and are ensuring the effective implementation of the world’s largest and India’s first at-scale wellbeing programs. Our programs are enabling 2.4 million vulnerable children and adolescents across 3 states of India to become healthy, effective learners and succeed academically, as externally validated by agencies like Boston Consulting Group.

2. What is the global impact your organization has achieved regarding your selected SDG? (No Word Limit)

Labhya is building a global movement to bring children’s mental health and well-being to the forefront of conversations. Our mission is to empower children from low socio-economic backgrounds with the necessary skills to cope with challenges and poverty, ensuring better mental health and well-being. This enables our children to become effective learners. Our founder, Richa, has been recognized for her unwavering commitment to equitable education, well-being, and supporting vulnerable children. She has served on the board of UNICEF India, where she emphasised on the importance of and enabled work towards children’s well-being for quality education. Her dedication to SDG Goal 4 has earned her the designation of, one of the 17, SDG Young Leaders by the UN Secretary-General, and she was invited to share her journey and Labhya's impact at the UN General Assembly in April 2023. To support children's well-being, we are attracting catalytic philanthropic capital to the mental health and well-being space and working on systemic scaling of the program, supported by large-scale, rigorous outcomes-based evidence. Labhya’s successful collaboration with Selena Gomez’s Rare Impact Fund, USAID DIV, and the French Government, among other ecosystem partners have enabled us to bring children’s well-being to the forefront of conversations globally and also shape the overall philanthropy ecosystem. Labhya also became the first SEL & well-being organisation globally to be supported by both the Draper Richards Kaplan (DRK) Foundation & Mulago Foundation. Labhya is among the first and youngest organisations pioneering the way to mobilise catalytic and multilateral aid like the French & US government towards mental health and well-being across India and global south. Mental health and well-being for education are still highly taboo subjects, leading to these areas being severely neglected, under-researched, and under-resourced. This has resulted in limited evidence for mental health and well-being programs. Despite these challenges, Labhya has spearheaded the evidence-based well-being movement in India. Labhya is conducting the world’s largest impact study on well-being—a pioneering Randomised Control Trial (RCT) with J-PAL, advised by Nobel Laureate, Dr. Michael Kremer. This study, the first of its kind on a large scale and over a long duration, will pioneer evidence generation for well-being programs essential to quality education. Through these initiatives, we are on a journey to build a global movement, ensuring that children’s mental health and well-being become central to discussions and actions worldwide.

3. What is the scalability of your innovation and how do you plan to achieve it? (No Word Limit)

Our audacious goal is to impact 30 million children by 2030. Labhya partners with Indian state governments to co-create and ensure effective implementation of a state-wide daily well-being and mental health class that is integrated into the school day. We have co-created and are ensuring the effective implementation of the world’s largest and India’s first at-scale mental health programs. Our programs are enabling 2.4 million vulnerable children across 3 states of India to cope and become healthy, effective learners as validated by agencies like Boston Consulting Group. Our programs are extremely scalable as Labhya enters into a unique Public-Private partnership (PPP) with Indian state governments, where state governments fund / take care of all program expenses for running the programs effectively including, training costs for 150k teachers, teachers allowances, distribution of learning materials and curriculum, annual state-level conferences to amplify and celebrate the impact of the program. Further the government also commits to a significant time and people investment. This means that dedicated time of 150k public school teachers and 2.5k government officials daily goes towards implementation of Labhya’s programs. On average each of our government partners invests $75-$120 million yearly towards ensuring program implementation. We have mobilised resources worth a billion dollars cumulatively through our government partners since the implementation of our first program (since 2018). Further, our program is cost-effective and is designed to be both low-resource and low-burden for teachers, ensuring its scalability and effective implementation. The effectiveness of our program delivery is ensured by regularly training existing public school teachers within their existing training schedules, thus making it scalable. We are on a mission to achieve our audacious goal of enabling 30 million vulnerable children to become effective learners by 2030. We will achieve this through more government partnerships and integrating our daily localised emotional wellbeing program across all state-run public schools.

4. What is your organization’s unique strategy for using technology to achieve your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

Our current efforts have allowed us to reach 2.4 million children. However, leveraging technology is essential for scaling our reach and impact and enhancing the depth and quality of our programs. It ensures last-mile connectivity for teachers and facilitates continuous information sharing and capacity building for all stakeholders. Using technology, we monitor the implementation of our program inside classrooms at scale. Our strategy for technology also includes focusing on data-driven tasking to enhance performance monitoring and improve program implementation. It will help us identify areas of improvement and create tailored interventions at the last mile. We are further working on creating tech-based support for the capacity building of stakeholders to equip them with the necessary skills and knowledge on best classroom practices. Eventually, we would also create a Learning Management System that enables personalised execution, support and monitoring at all levels of program implementation.

5. What challenges did you encounter while working for your selected SDG, and how did you address them? (150 Words Limit)

Mental health and well-being are still considered taboo subjects, making it challenging to position them as essential components of quality education and effective learning. This gap posed a significant obstacle to achieving SDG 4, but we successfully addressed it by integrating well-being into the public education systems of three Indian states. Our approach involves placing dedicated teams at all levels of government to consistently build expertise in well-being and increase buy-in for our programs. Another challenge has been the lack of contextual evidence in the well-being and education space. We are addressing this by embarking on an evidence-generation journey, including conducting one of the world's largest Randomised Control Trials (RCT) on children's well-being and education. Lastly, the scarcity of catalytic capital in this space was a challenge. Labhya has successfully attracted catalytic capital from partners like DRK, Mulago, the US and French governments, and Selena Gomez to advance children’s well-being.

6. How did you engage local communities and stakeholders in your work, and what was their feedback? (150 Words Limit)

Labhya co-creates children's well-being programs at-scale through participatory methods in collaboration with government stakeholders, public school teachers, and students. From the needs analysis to implementation, young people and all stakeholders are key collaborators. Our process combines empirically proven practices with on-ground expertise from public school teachers who have lived experiences and are proximate to the problem. We create a program that is localised, trauma-informed, participatory, and culturally sensitive. The design phase includes intensive capacity-building, co-creation workshops, and feedback from selected public school teachers and key government stakeholders. Finally, the program is piloted and student feedback is thoroughly incorporated before the state-wide launch. Additionally, in evaluating impact, we collect stories of change and data directly from children, their parents, and teachers. Our first-ever government partnership and program is now 6 years old. This milestone is a testament to the effectiveness of the program and our long-standing successful partnership with the stakeholders.

7. Which organizational skills and resources did you use to deliver goods/services without harming the environment or society? (150 Words Limit)

As an organisation, we have adapted and innovated our approach to ensure sustainable, at-scale implementation without harming the environment or society. We leverage existing resources within the government education system, reducing the need for additional materials and minimising our environmental footprint. We have integrated technology to play a key role in effective implementation and monitoring, enabling us to scale while considering environmental impact. We’ve eliminated printed books significantly and we provide online curriculum versions for teachers, thus reducing paper usage. Further, our curriculum also includes environment-conscious lessons. Socially, our programs are developed and implemented in close collaboration with public school teachers, who are proximate to the challenges our children face. By incorporating local input, our programs are culturally sensitive and resonate with the communities we serve. Our programs aim to equip children with the necessary skills to become environmentally and socially conscious citizens along with better and effective learners.

8. In your view what roles do businesses, governments, and civil society should play in achieving the SDGs, and how can they collaborate effectively? (150 Words Limit)

Businesses, governments, and civil society each play distinct yet complementary roles in achieving the SDGs, making their collaboration essential. Civil society organisations often offer deep program expertise and valuable insights from young people who are directly affected by the issues. Governments possess the capacity and resources to implement these solutions effectively, at scale. Meanwhile, businesses can support innovation and provide the resources needed to mainstream sustainable practices and solutions. Labhya has successfully partnered with governments to sustainably implement our programs at-scale. We have also collaborated at the global and national level, including with the UN, World Bank, and institutions like Harvard and LSE. This has enabled us to highlight the importance of children's well-being in quality education and in achieving SDG 4. This collective effort underscores the power of partnerships in driving sustainable and impactful change.

9. What advice do you have for individuals or organizations aiming to create positive change and support the SDGs? (150 Words Limit)

For individuals and organisations aiming to create positive change and support the SDGs, it's essential to start with clear, long-term goals that guide your efforts toward sustainable impact. It is crucial to engage with existing systems to drive change that lasts and work closely with stakeholders to ensure our initiatives are deeply rooted and scalable. Leveraging technology as a powerful tool for innovation and adaptability can help us implement solutions efficiently and at scale, making a broader impact. Most importantly, involving young people who are closest to the problems we seek to address and integrating their perspectives and insights is invaluable in creating relevant, effective, and lasting change.

10. How would winning this SDG Award help you enhance your impact and expand your project? (150 Words Limit)

Winning this SDG Award would help us gain visibility and bring further global attention to children’s well-being. It would connect us with a strong network of social innovators, allowing us to actively collaborate with leaders and changemakers who share our mission. Through the network, we would be able to demonstrate to our peers how our low-resource curriculum can be contextualised and scaled in other geographies. The mentorship offered by the award would also help us expand our reach, increase our impact, and strengthen our efforts to make children’s well-being for effective education a global priority.

11. What are your future objectives regarding your selected SDG? (150 Words Limit)

Through our programs, we aim to positively impact 30 million children by 2030 enabling them to become effective learners. Our future objectives for SDG 4 involve elevating the importance of well-being in education, a field that is often under-resourced and under-researched globally. This includes deepening our efforts to attract catalytic capital to the ecosystem and generating rigorous, localised evidence to bring the issue into global focus. We also aim to drive policy-level changes by building the capacity of governments to support scalable and sustainable integration of well-being practices into the education systems. Our goal is to create systemic change that ensures well-being is a core component of quality education, ultimately improving learning outcomes and overall child development on a global scale.
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