When you look at things with a different light, things start to change. You discover new formats, ask different questions and find different answers.

Just imagine you are a manager from an international company. You do business trips, maybe across all important markets, you sit in meetings, you manage high level projects. Suddenly, you are asked to spend a week in rural India. For gaining more insights. Different ones – out of your comfort zone. For understanding better what sustainable activities, or impact making means;what it means to live at the poverty line, what it means to make “change for better“ happen, or how health , energy, mobility, environment and other basic needs are interlinked. You discover why isolated solutions for a certain issue will probably not be enough for a real change for people who live every day with many basic challenges – although it might be very successful according to the KPIs you have defined and even reached.

But let’s come back to your trip: Your accommodation? A clean, but simple guest house run by an NGO in the middle of green mountains and tribal villages. Sometimes there are power cuts. 2 minutes, sometimes also 15 min. Well, not so easy if you are just taking a shower or you cannot find your mobile right away to lighten the room. Fortunately, there is a candle in the room…

The program starts at 6.30 – with a cultural exercise. Breakfast, field visits “on the ground“ . Visit and interact with self help groups in a tribal village, visit a tribal hospital and see how doctors do basic care while lacking some basic tools and reduce children mortality as much as they can… still seeing that under- and malnutrition will continue…, and yes, you are asked to interact with HIV infected families, you see out how you can set up a micro business with 50 EUR ( after having saved money for several years to have these 50 EUR where to start from)…. And how much this small business might impact, just because now you are able to pay the bus ticket to go to a doctor if needed.

In the afternoon you discuss, reflect, think about disruptive innovation, challenges and limitations because of existing systems and behaviors – in both worlds. In yours – and theirs. Well, and then you should also do a basic training with a target group you are not familiar with, without any slide, just some materials you find around. No consultants, no big strategic discussions, no possibility to buy anything. Time pressure. From humans to humans. Just do it and learn while doing how to interact, what fits to the needs of the people in front of you. What really matters to them right now…

You find poverty, yes, but you find also a lot of smiles, happiness and many things that make you feel good. Even better than those you might know and you start doubting whether the views and thoughts you have about poverty, about India, about Indian people are reflecting the realities you have seen.

You ask what it is? Well, that’s in short our Making More Health Insights week in India, just started in its 13th edition in Tamil Nadu, India. A very different leadership experience, full of questions, putting doubts to what you thought you know about impact, sustainability and many insights in human nature, a roller coaster of emotions, a week where you learn about systemic approaches and network analysis and most of all: where YOU create win- wins – for the communities in need and yourself.

We offer such experience weeks in India and Kenya also to interested external stakeholders, for companies and people who want to invest in social impact, but want to understand even more about real needs, people who want to engineer change with long term impact.

Interested? Well, then stay tuned and read more in the next days or just contact.