At 19, a young man who had once been rescued from rag-picking stood on stage alongside a state minister and spoke directly to the government about what he needed. He was not there to thank anyone. He was making demands, clearly and directly, to people who could act on them.
For Smitha Shetty, CEO of Catalysts for Social Action (CSA), the moment captured what long-term support can make possible for children who grow up without a family to fall back on. The young man had entered care at 10 as an orphan with no traceable family. Today, he is training to become a computer data operator.
This is the kind of transformation at the centre of Smitha’s work at CSA, an organisation that works with children living in institutional care and young people after they leave those institutions at 18. Yet her own journey to the social sector began far away from children’s homes.
Lessons from Capital Markets
Smitha spent 15 years in capital markets, working across New York, Hong Kong, Tokyo and Mumbai. Her transition into the social sector did not begin with a single defining incident. Instead, it grew from something she had observed years earlier while working at Lehman Brothers.
In 2006, Smitha moved from Lehman Brothers in New York City to its Mumbai office. She expected to find a different working environment but discovered that the two offices operated in remarkably similar ways. The controls, reporting standards and processes were consistent across continents.
A reconciliation process in Mumbai ran in the same way as it did in New York, even though the people working on it had never met those who had designed it.
“It took me years to understand the true beauty of what I had been looking at. Basically, the essence of that organization had held, right? All the way across the world and it had not lost anything on the way.”
For Smitha, this became a lesson about what it takes to build an organisation that can scale without losing its core. At CSA, that principle became central to how she thinks about care.
“A child in the most rural home we work in should get the same quality of attention as a child anywhere else. That is not an aspiration; that is an operating requirement, and that is the thing I watch for.”
A Career Shift That Started with Volunteering
Smitha’s first brush with the social sector came in 2015, while she was still working in finance.
It began with a three-month spoken English course through Teach India. She later conducted workshops for visually impaired students who wanted to understand what actually happens inside a corporate office. She also taught spoken English at a municipal school in Vikhroli and conducted Saturday sessions at a youth organisation in Powai.
The interactions left her thinking beyond the sessions themselves.
Young people asked her whether people would hear their accent when they spoke English, how long it would take before they could apply for a better-paying job and whether they could bring their siblings the following week.
She also saw how deeply people working in the social sector cared about outcomes.
“I had assumed this sector ran only on good intentions.”
What changed her mind was seeing people solve difficult problems with fewer resources and less certainty than she had experienced in her previous work.
“But people solving genuinely hard problems with less money and less certainty than anything I had ever worked with. That is what actually pulled me across.”
In 2016, Smitha moved into the social sector. Rather than immediately working in implementation, she worked across different organisational functions.
At a philanthropic intermediary, she learned about the organisational capacity needed for growth. At a public health organisation, she developed a five-year strategy and a framework for working with partners. At an education nonprofit, she handled finance, compliance and monitoring and evaluation.
Smitha also continued her own learning. She completed a master’s in social work and an in-depth course in data science and analysis. She is currently in the third year of a PhD in social entrepreneurship at IIT [campus to be confirmed], focusing on inclusivity in entrepreneurship. Her case study on entrepreneurship among visually impaired people has been published by Ivey Publishing.
Looking back, she sees those experiences as pieces that prepared her to lead an organisation.
“Build something that holds its shape in every room it enters.”
“And build it so well that it does not depend on you being there.”
Smitha Shetty and Catalysts for Social Action
By the time Smitha became CEO of CSA, she had worked across finance, operations, strategy, compliance, monitoring and evaluation, data and organisational development.
What appealed to her was the opportunity to bring these functions together while working within the constraints faced by social sector organisations.
But CSA’s cause itself was equally important.
Children living in institutional care are visible only when a rescue or raid makes the news. What happens to them during the years that follow receives far less attention.
“The rescue is not the end of the story, you know, actually; it is the first page of it.”
These children are already within a system where the government provides basic support. But they often lack what a family provides quietly in the background: someone who notices what they are good at, supports their education, asks how their exams went, helps them make decisions and remains available after they turn 18.
Smitha pointed to another gap. Thousands of organisations work on children’s education and health, but most work with children living with families. Far fewer work inside children’s homes, and fewer still continue supporting young people after they leave.
“The need is most intense exactly where the fewest people are involved.”
How CSA Evolved
CSA was established in 2002 following the personal experience of its founders, Vipul Jain and Shibani Jain, who had adopted two children in the late 1990s.
At the time, there was no centralised platform, no social media and limited ways for adoptive parents and adoptees to connect. CSA initially helped connect children in remote parts of India with prospective adoptive parents elsewhere in the country, while also providing counselling and raising awareness.
Over time, the founders noticed that children who were not adopted often moved into Child Care Institutions, or CCIs.
That led CSA towards institutional care.
Today, CSA works across three connected areas: supporting children inside institutional care, providing aftercare to young people once they leave, and strengthening the ecosystem around them.
Supporting Children Inside Care
According to Smitha, the government provides the basics, but children need continuous support for their development.
CSA works on education, health, nutrition, life skills and psychological well-being. It also addresses infrastructure where required and assesses nutrition standards and compliance with the Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015.
Education is particularly important because many children enter institutional care after disrupted schooling.
Smitha shared the example of a 12-year-old rescued from child labour who might be placed in a sixth-grade classroom despite being completely illiterate. CSA therefore provides customised academic support based on each child’s level, beginning with foundational reading, literacy and numeracy before moving towards digital literacy.
The organisation also establishes computer and STEM labs and teaches life skills that children might otherwise learn through their families.
But support cannot end at 18.
When Institutional Care Ends
Turning 18 can create a major gap for care leavers. They have to leave the CCI at precisely the age when many young people outside the system continue relying heavily on their families.
A young person leaving care may have no family home, address or person to call.
CSA’s aftercare programme begins preparing young people from around 16 or 17. It includes career counselling, skills training, higher education, job readiness, spoken English, personality development, financial literacy, digital literacy and support with accommodation.
Smitha describes aftercare as the last mile.
“If you get that right, the child is set for life.”
CSA also works with caregivers, government staff and CCI management. This includes capacity-building, sensitisation on child protection laws and strengthening the way institutions operate.
The Numbers Behind the Work
CSA currently works in 124 CCIs across six states: Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Goa.
During the year discussed in the interview, CSA worked with 8,519 children, while 4,407 children were living in those homes at the close of the year. Smitha explained that the difference reflects the moving population of children who may return to families, move elsewhere, age out or enter care during the year.
Among children living in institutional care, CSA reported a 91% pass rate in both Class 10 and Class 12 board examinations.
The aftercare programme has reached almost 4,000 care leavers. Last year, CSA enrolled 816 new care leavers and facilitated more than 1,700 job placements.
The course completion rate was 96%, with a dropout rate below 5%. Smitha also said 81% of [denominator to be confirmed] were in their first employment, while 90% of those employed remained in continuous employment for two years or more.
Average monthly salaries moved from ₹12,000 to ₹15,000. Some young people progressed to earning ₹60,000 to ₹70,000 a month.
For Smitha, the significance is not only the salary itself, but what stable employment means for someone without a family safety net.
From Survivors to Self-Reliant
Behind these figures are individual stories that Smitha considers representative of the wider work.
A young woman entered care at 13 after her mother arranged her marriage to a 45-year-old man for money. Today, at 22, she is a nurse after completing a GNM course.
Then there is a 14-year-old girl currently living in one of CSA’s homes who reported five years of sexual abuse by her father. She now wants to become a police officer.
“She has already done the hardest thing anyone can do. She has already been braver than any of us.”
For Smitha, what remains is on CSA: the education, training, skills and adult support she will need to get there.
“Now, everything that is left: the schooling, the training, the skilling, an adult who shows up, that part is ours. All we have to do is stand next to her.”
One of the outcomes Smitha takes particular pride in is that 12 care leavers returned this year to teach English to children still living in CCIs.
“Because it means it worked well enough that they want to hand it on further.”
Chalaang 2030
CSA’s future roadmap is called Chalaang 2030.
Its ambition is that a child growing up in institutional care should leave at 18 with an education, a skill and somebody to call, regardless of the state in which they grow up.
CSA currently operates in six states and is assessing up to four more: Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand, Telangana and potentially Uttarakhand.
By 2030, CSA aims to expand from 124 homes to 400, reach 25,000 children and support 10,000 care leavers.
But Smitha sees growth itself as only one part of the challenge.
“Our plan is our people, our processes, and our technology.”
“Tripling the work is actually the easy part; doing it without quality of care slipping, that is the hard part.”
The principle takes Smitha back to the lesson she learned in capital markets. Growth, in her view, should not create different versions of an organisation in different places. The same standards and expectations should hold whether the work is happening in a remote district or in Mumbai.
In conversation with The Logical Indian, Smitha summed up her career simply as “from New York Stock Exchange to a children’s home.”
For Smitha, the journey has been less about leaving one career behind and more about carrying forward the lessons of one field into another. The systems thinking she developed in capital markets now informs how she approaches an organisation working with children who need sustained support.
Ultimately, her work at CSA is about making sure that leaving institutional care does not mean leaving support behind.
The Logical Indian Perspective
Smitha’s journey shows how professional experience can be redirected towards solving problems that require both empathy and strong systems. CSA’s work highlights a crucial gap in institutional childcare: providing food, shelter and basic services is only one part of helping a child build an independent future. Education, life skills, emotional support, career preparation and continued guidance after 18 can determine whether a young person is able to move forward with confidence.
As CSA works towards its Chalaang 2030 goals, the larger challenge will be ensuring that expansion does not come at the cost of consistency and quality. For children who have already lost the support of a family, building a system that remains dependable wherever they live can be as important as any individual intervention.
Can stronger systems of care help every child transition to adulthood with confidence? Share your thoughts.
If you’d like us to feature your story, please write to us at csr@5w1h.media.
Also Read: People of Purpose: From Banjara Roots, Paras Banjara Empowers DNT Communities Through Olakhaan Trust
