Governance and participation Members engage with the vartaLeap Coalition through purpose- driven groups. These include the thematic vartaLab groups (climate action, constitutional values, gender equality and well-being) and the working groups (bonding and learning, narrative, and programming and fundraising). The General Body of Members provides overall direction for the coalition, while the vartaKarta (the advisory board) develops strategies and supports the purpose-driven groups. Finally, the facilitariat and core working group (through host organizations, ComMutiny – The Youth Collective and members who have opted in) executes the strategies. Team culture and competencies Competencies: The facilitariat team works to create an enabling space for members of the coalition, as well as each other. Relational competencies are important and are built through processes and systems. Design and facilitation skills are also crucial for the coalition. The facilitariat conducts 360-degree feedback processes and bi-annual team retreats for team building, capacity building, and performance review and enhancement. Values: In its charter, the vartaLeap coalition embraces a co- created set of values, including: 1) embody love for ourselves and others; 2) ensure freedom and equity for everyone; 3) practice justice and ecological integrity for ourselves and everyone; 4) celebrate fraternity and inclusion of all identities and empathy for all thoughts and perspectives; 5) bring creativity and fun in what it does and the experiences it co-creates; 6) be authentic in thought and action; and 7) collaborate in vartaLeap’s approach. Collaborative and adaptive learning The coalition aspires to always work collaboratively with members, mobilizing individual strengths and competencies. vartaLeap pilots are executed and operationalized through hub organizations with strong implementation skills. The design and co-creation of these pilots are built by members who bring implementation expertise, but also those who bring youth- centric design experience or thematic expertise. Many vartaLeap members come from the Changelooms ecosystem (a learning and leadership journey for young social entrepreneurs facilitated by Pravah and ComMutiny – The Youth Collective) that predates vartaLeap and are accustomed to using design and facilitation processes such as Big Ticket Design and Ocean in a Drop youth development grounding. These processes are, therefore, organically embedded into the larger coalition through ongoing programmes. vartaLeap’s work is iterative, building on previous experiences and designs and creating spaces to review, reflect and pivot when needed, while also allowing for significant contextualization and adaptation.Supporting infrastructureIn the summer of 2021, the COVID-19 Delta wave spread across India, causing a sharp surge in cases and quickly becoming a crisis that overwhelmed the healthcare system. Driven by the highly transmissible Delta variant, daily infections peaked at over 400,000, resulting in severe shortages of hospital beds, oxygen and medicines. At this time, the vartaLeap community was relatively nascent, but slowly, what began as an ad-hoc crisis response initiative grew into a systematic effort with reach across India. Given the nature of the crisis, the vartaLeap community’s diversity became its strength. Donors and well-resourced organizations contributed generously in order to reach grassroots communities, while frontline organizations quickly disseminated food and health packages. Throughout the effort, a small core group of strategic advisers, donors and practitioners guided the initiative overall. Although the immediate health and hunger crisis was paramount at the time, vartaLeap also began to collectively think ahead towards recovery and resilience. This led to the development of holistic initiatives on preventative well-being to address the hopelessness, helplessness, isolation and anxiety that people were feeling, especially young people and youth workers. This initiative became a game changer, with 80 intergenerational vartaLeap members coming together to co-create two gamified interventions to nurture individual and collective well-being collaborative projects to address community needs. These projects included 1) Togetherness Table – a unique experience that creates a safe space to build “feelings literacy” by opening up dialogues in intergenerational settings, and 2) Q-ki Plutory Power – an online game show for intergenerational teams to explore, co-create and amplify collective well-being. Throughout, vartaLeap members celebrated the passionate and purposeful work of Jagriks and youth workers on the frontlines. This widespread relief and recovery campaign came to be called “Saath Nirbhar” (a Hindi term meaning “interdependent”) and reached more than 650,000 people with critical medical services, food security and well-being interventions in a matter of months. Saath Nirbhar has been recognized as one of India’s top 50 last mile responders by the World Economic Forum.29 29. World Economic Forum. (n.d.). Saath Nirbhar - vartaLeap Coalition and ComMutiny. https://widgets.weforum.org/lastmiletop50india/saath-nirbhar-vartaleap- coalition-and-commutiny/. Case vignette: The Saath Nirbhar campaign The Future is Collective: Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 74

The Future is Collective Case Studies of Collective Social Innovation 2025