Today, over 800 million children in economically and socially difficult situations do not have the opportunity to develop essential skills and qualities like problem solving, collaboration and communication, values and principles, and gender equality. This critical gap where these children are not equipped to become responsible and employable citizens is leading to a crisis in our future society since it does not allow them to work themselves out of the cycle of poverty. (United Nations recognizes this crisis in the form of needing to develop global citizenship skills under Sustainable Development Goal # 4 of providing inclusive and equitable quality education.)

Across employers, work-readiness of youth is seen as the most important area that needs urgent attention. Key competencies that youth lack include communication skills, professionalism, confidence, interpersonal skills to work in diverse teams, innovation, and conceptual understanding of problems. Employers note the biggest obstacle is not that jobs are not available but that candidates are not work-ready. With a very large % of youth, the largest workforce by 2027 will be in India, Southeast Asia, and Africa. The above gaps are more exaggerated for youth from low-income backgrounds whose parents or schools cannot guide them in their education/career choices.

Enabling Leadership works with 9-15-year-old children from underprivileged backgrounds and through creative and innovative programs (that use Football and Lego), inculcates these essential and critical skills that are indispensable to becoming productive and responsible adults and eventually working themselves out of intergenerational poverty. Each program is carefully designed to enable children to collaborate, reflect on and connect first-hand experiences and learnings from the classroom or playground with their real lives.