Ruchi Mathur is the Co-founder and Vice Chairperson of Lighthouse Communities Foundation, a non-profit organization working to transform the lives of India’s opportunity youth by setting up “Lighthouses” in slum communities, as well as anchoring other livelihood programs under the Global Opportunity Youth Network. The Lighthouses are physical spaces that foster agency, workplace competencies, and skilling among young people to address the systemic challenges that keep them from reaching their full potential.
Through its various programs, Lighthouse Communities Foundation has reached approximately 200,000 young people. The Lighthouse program itself has enrolled 60,000 Opportunity Youth and placed almost 40,000 in wage-earning jobs. Many participants have not only secured employment and started a career but transformed their self-perception and aspirations. The ripple effects are evident—when young people in a community start succeeding, others follow suit.
Ruchi Mathur is the Co-founder and Vice Chairperson of Lighthouse Communities Foundation.
Mathur lives and works in Pune, a city in western India approximately three hours’ drive from Mumbai. With a population of seven million people, it’s a city with both haves and have-nots—home to top academic institutions and a vibrant tech sector, and to a population of slum residents who live in relative poverty and precarity. Below, she shares insights about her work, the challenges young people face, and how her vision for change is reshaping communities.
Q: Why did you choose to dedicate your life to helping opportunity youth in India?
A: I love this work because I stand for joy and full potential for myself and for others. Growing up, I did not have agency; I was not able to speak up for myself. So I grew up with one part of me angry, and at one point I realized that the anger is not at the world, but towards myself because I didn’t stand up for myself. Later, because of several meaningful experiences and a few wonderful people that I met along the way, I understood the concept of agency and I understood that, okay, this is what I didn’t have.
Ever since I can remember, I felt that there is something that I’m meant to do, but I didn’t know what. After I finished my post-graduation, I was very intentional about trying out different things until I found ‘it.’ I tried advertising, marketing, teaching, and volunteering—which is when I thought, perhaps I want to be in the social sector. Finally, in 2005, I joined a nonprofit called CRY – Child Rights and You. Within two months, I knew that social sector work was what I had been searching for. It felt meaningful. It felt real.
I have found my home in Lighthouse Communities Foundation. The journey of youth towards agency and livelihoods is also my own journey towards agency and full potential. I would say that all of us at Lighthouse Communities, whether the co-founder Dr Ganesh Natarajan, the leadership team, or indeed any team member, are committed to enabling agency for self and others. There is an amazing camaraderie and an infectious sense of purpose!
Q: What are the most pressing challenges for opportunity youth in India today?
A:One big challenge is lack of a good education—most people have access to schools, but quality is the issue. Another challenge is the English language; more and more people are coming into urban areas because they want to find work, and knowledge of English is important especially in the slightly higher-end spaces like the technology sector.
But mostly what we’ve seen through the work at Lighthouse Communities is that it’s the ‘inner work’ that is critical. Young adults in low-income communities often grow up with a sense of inadequacy because they are told, ‘nothing much is going to happen in your life’ or ‘you’re not good enough.’ This gets in the way of being able to get a job because their self-image is saying ‘I am not going to amount to much.’
Ruchi Mathur at Aspen Ideas.
Secondly, they don’t have the right role models, so they don’t have a sense of possibility. Their father is a watchman, so they feel they’ll grow up to be a watchman. The concept of a career is not something they’ve been exposed to.
The biggest insight for me in the first year of starting the Lighthouse program was that it’s much more difficult to get young people to take a job than for them to get a job. It is a commonly held myth that young people are just waiting for an opportunity; but that’s not actually true. They often avoid opportunities because they anticipate that the opportunity will translate into yet another instance of failure. Fear, anxiety, anger, and other negative emotions come in the way of embracing life.
Q: How does Lighthouse Communities address these challenges?
A: The Lighthouse program impacts both lives and livelihoods. It is highly personalized with a deep focus on nurturing the agency of youth. The journey at the Lighthouse begins with a mandatory 100-hour foundational program that enables self-discovery, a fun exploration of the world of work, building workplace competencies, digital empowerment, and spoken English. All of this happens through an arts-based curriculum that combines creative activities with peer-learning. In this space of joy and discovery, young people move to a space of confidence, hope and possibility.
It is only after this that youth have to choose the specific skilling path they wish to pursue. In this, they have freedom of choice. Lighthouses partner with other skilling organizations to offer more than 30 skilling courses. Thus, each youth is able to follow their personal pathway to full potential.
Young people find a space of belonging at the Lighthouse, and Lighthouse team members are their mentors for life! Youth finding work after the Lighthouse program have some of the highest retention rates in the country.
Q: What’s the hardest part of your job?
A: One of the challenges is the fact that it’s a multi-stakeholder program. The government is involved, there are donor partners, as well as skilling partners and employer partners. The local governments in each city contribute the capital expenditure (buildings, renovation, furniture, fixed assets) and we rely on donations from corporations and foundations to manage the operational expenditures (skilling costs, salaries, utilities, etc.). So the timing is the challenge. The government may select a building for a new Lighthouse, but it could take months to complete the work. Meanwhile, our donors might expect immediate action. Or it could happen the other way.
At times, there are funding gaps between donor cycles. We cannot afford to close a Lighthouse temporarily—it would confuse the community. So we just have to figure out a way to keep it running.
Q: What keeps you motivated?
A: We are very, very fortunate to have highly committed people who are working in Lighthouse Communities, and they show the way. With 500 staff members, we are a close-knit organization that thrives on collaboration. Our WhatsApp group buzzes all day with updates on events, training sessions, and community visits… 90% of the things that happen in the organization, I get to know of through this WhatsApp group! The team is incredibly self-driven and inspiring.
