“A government resolution says men and women can use public toilets free of charge, but women have to pay for using toilets. We object to this bias.”

Rahul Gaikwad, Leaders’ Quest Fellow (left), as quoted in the Indian newspaper Daily Bhaskar

Our Quest Fellowship Programme in India is in its fourth year. More than 300 fellows have graduated and a further 195 are receiving intensive training. We have current and former fellows working in all but two of the 35 districts of Maharashtra state, as well as five districts of Karnataka. Over 100 organisations now form part of our network.

A large and growing fellow community brings with it many new opportunities. In Maharashtra, fellows are working together to lead campaigns on key issues, mobilising NGOs and community groups and collaborating with local government to secure basic rights.

In Mumbai, the chosen campaign is ‘Free to Pee’, which promotes the right of women to use free public toilets. In Mumbai, there are four times the number of men’s facilities than there are women’s – and women often have to pay to use them. This is despite a 2003 government resolution stating that public toilets in the city should be available free of charge.

When you consider that 44% of Mumbai’s residents have no toilet at home, and that Mumbai’s unofficial toilets are its creeks and rivers, it is a situation with wide-reaching consequences for public health and the environment. Not to mention the issue of personal safety for local women….

Last autumn, 60 of our Mumbai fellows (from throughout the four-year programme) came together and mobilised 35 local NGOs around the issue. In November, they met with the Mumbai Municipal Council (BMC) and presented a list of demands. This included a request to begin surveying existing facilities, ensure blocks are well-maintained and attended by female cleaners, and put up boards confirming that the toilets are free of charge (an effective anti-corruption measure).

After the fellows secured the backing of the Chief Engineer for Sanitation, the surveys got underway in ten wards of the city. The aim is for free and hygienic women’s toilets to be built every 2km throughout Mumbai, with the NGOs working with the BMC to manage and maintain them.

Fellows are getting organised in other places, too. Last summer, they got together in each region of Maharashtra to decide on an issue of great local importance for their campaign. In Western Maharashtra, its equal distribution of water; in Northern Maharashtra, it’s the civil rights of the Pardhi tribe, who face significant discrimination.

In Konkan and Marathwada, it’s implementation of the Domestic Violence Act and the campaign against female foeticide, for which they have already secured the backing of the State Minister for Women and Children.

In Vidarbha, the campaign centres on community claims to forest lands. Mobilised by our fellows, 130 villages have submitted applications to be officially recognised as owners of the forest within their village boundaries, enabling them to manage the area sustainably and earn their livelihoods from selling fruits, bamboo and timber products.

Across the state, campaigns are bringing together fellows, mentors, communities and local organisations, expanding the Leaders’ Quest network, multiplying our impact and bringing about sustained change on vital issues.

Sujata Khandekar, LQ’s India Fellowship Programme Director, says: “In this way, fellows’ leadership gets more rooted and recognised in their own communities. The regional campaigns are sowing the seeds for a grassroots movement in Maharashtra.”

Read more about the Free to Pee campaign on dailybhaskar.com

Based in Winchester Kathryn launched her own Personal and Organizational Development Business in January 2003. This was a ‘natural’ next step after a highly successful and progressive graduate career in retailing with Marks and Spencer’s followed by Senior Consultancy roles in Management and Organisational Development and a two year HR Director and Board position.

With all her clients Kathryn works hard to understand their business, prides herself on being observant to the ‘real issues’ and offers constructive and practical suggestions to achieve tangible results. She consistently achieves high levels of trust with those she works with and has long term relationships with many of her corporate clients who have locations throughout the UK, Europe, America and Asia.

Typically Kathryn works with people who are already highly competent but who are curious to explore new insights, broaden their thinking and realise more of their full potential. Authentic leadership is at the heart of all her interventions to maximise and sustain high performance. Clients have described working with Kathryn as “challenging, honest and thought provoking”, “Supportive, pushed hard but always with sensitivity and integrity”, “commercially oriented and of practical relevance”, “I found a new level of energy and motivation”  “found renewed confidence to face the journey.”

Kathryn has always had strong links with her community and charitable sector providing support and guidance in a variety of ways. She is married with two teenage children.

Prior to joining Leaders’ Quest, Eric spent seven years as the Chief Executive of Restless Development, now a powerful global champion for the role that young people can and must play in their own lives and as contributors to the development of their communities and countries. Under his leadership, Restless Development quadrupled the scope and impact of its work, engaging more than 500,000 young people in direct programmes each year, training promising youth-led organisations in 40+ countries, forming strategic partnerships with leading companies such as KPMG, Vodafone and Tesco, and serving as a global expert on youth-related issues to national governments and major international aid institutions such as the World Bank and the UK Department for International Development.

Earlier in his career, Eric founded and directed three non-profit organizations empowering young people to address significant social issues, including education for immigrant children, health education for poor urban schoolchildren, and youth civic participation, and did two years of humanitarian service on refugee issues and human rights in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbia and Guatemala. Eric also has three years’ experience as a strategy and management consultant to leading companies and non-profit organisations, focusing on increasing business acumen in the non-profit sector and increasing social impact in the private sector.

Eric has received an Emmy Award, Telly Award, and the National Society of Professional Journalists Public Service Award for his work in various initiatives with young people, and in 2011 was selected as one of the Devex 40 Under 40 International Development Leaders in London.

This Quest was very timely for me. Questions around the reason for my existence have been challenging me every day. Four days in Mumbai have definitely triggered a lot of thoughts and actions for me, as well as giving me a clear understanding of ‘sustainability’.

Summarising my key takeaways…

1) We realised that sustainability, innovation and leadership are all related.

2) The difference between sustainability and CSR in the business context is:

Sustainability = making a profit after considering the impact on the environment and society.

CSR = the things which we do after making a profit.

3) Practical leadership lessons from the Leaders’ Quest Fellows, Ratna and Mamtaz, in the slums include:
Realising the power of transformation, thought leadership, passion, leading by example and mentorship.

4) The Methi river exposed me to the biggest truth in life:
Nothing is constant. Every form of matter in this universe changes from one state to the other.

5) Social Enterprise equals:
Enterprise which is qualified as social, (based on its intent and design), is scalable, commercially viable and benefits society.

6) Interconnectedness in space vs division in society:
I realised more strongly that we (human beings) are more connected to each other than we think.
We all use the same set of resources from this planet.
Our actions have an impact on someone else, sometime, somewhere…
Today, in a country like India, the DIVIDE between the poor and the rich is too big….

I think we have several choices available at our disposal every day and we should use our discretion to make informed decisions which will create a win-win situation for all of society. I am highly committed to taking forward my learning from the Quest .

With a strong interest in foreign languages and cultures, Fiammetta started studying Chinese when she was very young on the wave of her close friendship with a Chinese girl in Italy, who is like a sister to her. She deepened her knowledge of China during many visits to the country and, after graduating from a Master’s in International Studies, moved to Beijing on a scholarship, where she decided to commit herself to addressing social and environmental problems in any way she could. She has volunteered to improve the lives of disadvantaged children, created volunteer-driven pilot projects and mobilised hundreds of volunteers to promote sustainable and equitable development. ‘Sustainable Development’ is also the subject of the MSc she earned from SOAS while working in China.

Fiammetta enjoys going to new places, to the theatre, the cinema and live music shows. She likes playing volleyball and brain stretchers, as well as writing poems and spending time with her family in Italy and anywhere they are.

By day two, I was amazed to witness the conviction at a major company that we visited towards sustainability and how this is wired into their DNA. A visit to a school and the surrounding community in an underprivileged area then left me overwhelmed by the simplicity of their lives. I was struck by the pure thirst and value for an education – which would substantially transform their lives – along with the conviction and optimism of the volunteers and teachers committed to making a positive change in society.

The third morning of the Quest left me completely at a loss for words. We were talking about something I’d never really thought about before: garbage.

We began with a visit to an NGO working tirelessly to improve the lives of illiterate garbage workers. We then met with a company where this NGO has installed a biogas facility to convert garbage from the kitchen both into gas that can be used for cooking and also into compost.

We spent the afternoon at a housing society – similar to where many of us live – where the residents had made a commitment to ‘zero waste’. The residents sort garbage into two groups – one for recycling and one for composting compost via a natural process.

In short, we began our morning at Asia’s second highest trash mountain, and ended it with companies and individuals who are working towards ‘zero waste’ approaches to avoid contributing to these trash mountains.

And then on the fourth day, it all came together. We combined our uncertainties from the first day with our experiences and learnings from days two and three to come up with some clarity of thought and well-defined action items for how we at SAP can contribute to improved sustainability.

I feel that something inside me has changed with regards to understanding and being aware of the criticality of sustainability and our moral responsibility to contribute in this area. The Quest really makes one understand this, and also understand the true and thorough interconnectedness that we all have across our society and communities.

We must engrain sustainability into our thinking and actions in order to preserve our environment, and to build a better future for ourselves and future generations.

Rohit Gupta is Head of SAP Custom Development and Location Head at the SAP Labs in Gurgaon, India.

Simon then ventured to South America where he chanced upon the English explorer, John Blashford-Snell, in a bar in La Paz. Simon joined his expedition into the Amazon. He spent the next 4 years leading scientists and aid workers back into the Amazon, across the Himalayas, Mongolia, and Africa. He managed teams and the constant risks, overseeing scientific research, the building or refurbishing of wells, clinics and schools, and the provision of medical aid.

In 2006, Simon was appointed CEO of the International blindness prevention NGO, Right to Sight. He focused on empowering local talent through training and the establishment of social enterprise models. He raised substantial funds and established partnerships with governments, NGO’s and business. Simon developed 25 projects in 8 African countries and India, resulting in partner clinics achieving 500,000 patients per annum within 4 years. Simon has also been mentoring people of varying ages and experiences for the past 15 years. Having taken time out in a Zen monastery to learn about silence and meditation, he now focuses his energies on fellow leaders, working with them to make the best of themselves in all aspects of their lives.

Simon lives in London, enjoys the chance to sail a boat, catch a fish or play a friendly round of golf. He regularly returns to Seville for a dose of sun, manzanilla and flamenco.

Rowan is a very committed African and feels very much like his work lies in this country and on this continent. He is married to Jane who runs a PR agency in Cape Town. They recently became pregnant and are expecting their first child in June 2012.

Rowan and Jane live in a seaside town outside Cape Town by the name of Hout Bay and are blissfully happy young Capetonians!

Hannah also chaired a community volunteer group, Community Outreach and Resources, during her time at University where she led a group of volunteers, focusing on local sustainability efforts.  In 2005 Hannah performed in ‘Godspell’ at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival!