After a menstrual health and cervical cancer awareness session in a rural community, one woman stayed back. She waited until everyone else had left. When she spoke, she said it was the first time in her life that someone had openly discussed these issues. She had been living with health problems for years but had never spoken about them to anyone, not her family, not her friends, not even a healthcare professional. That brief conversation stayed with Jigar Vaishnav long after the session ended.
Jigar is the founder of SP Seva Sansthan Foundation (SPSS Foundation), an organisation working across healthcare, women’s empowerment, education, skill development and social development in underserved communities. In conversation with The Logical Indian, he reflected on what brought him to this work, what he has learned from it and what purpose really means when recognition and reports are set aside.
A Mother’s Lesson
Vaishnav’s sense of purpose traces back to early loss. He was 13 years old when he lost his mother. “Even though she is no longer with me, the values she taught me continue to guide me every day,” he says. One lesson stayed with him above the rest. “She always used to say, ‘Learn to give, not just to take.’ She believed that we should not keep asking what society or the country has given us. Instead, we should ask ourselves, ‘What have we given back to society?'”
As he grew older and began visiting villages, those words took on new meaning. He met girls who wanted to study but lacked opportunities. He met women with health problems who were afraid to speak about them. He met families working hard every day without access to basic services. “The more time I spent with people at the grassroots level, the more I realized that real change happens when we listen, understand and work together with communities.” That realisation led, over time, to the founding of SPSS Foundation.
What Cities Get Wrong
One assumption Jigar pushes back on firmly is that rural communities lack ambition. “I think one of the biggest misunderstandings is that people in rural areas lack ambition or dreams. That is simply not true.” In his years of field work, he has met girls who dream of becoming doctors, teachers and police officers, women who want financial independence and young men who want to start businesses. “The problem is not a lack of ambition. The problem is a lack of opportunities and access.” What rural India needs, he says, is not sympathy. It needs investment, trust and opportunities.
Listening Before Planning
At SPSS Foundation, no intervention begins without spending time in the community first. “We start by listening. Before planning any project, we spend time understanding the community. We talk to women, young people, teachers, health workers, local leaders and families.” Vaishnav has learned that initial assumptions are often wrong. “Sometimes we enter a village thinking education is the biggest issue, but after speaking with people, we realize healthcare is the more urgent need.”
Problems are rarely isolated either. If a girl drops out of school, the cause could be health, social norms, financial challenges or lack of confidence. That interconnectedness is why SPSS Foundation works across multiple sectors.
Breaking the Silence Around Women’s Health
Of all the mindsets the foundation has tried to shift, Vaishnav identifies one as the hardest: the culture of silence around women’s health. When SPSS Foundation began its menstrual hygiene work, and later its cervical cancer awareness programmes, it became clear that information alone was not the obstacle. “The bigger challenge was that many women had been taught from a young age that these topics should not be discussed openly.”
Many women had never heard the term cervical cancer. Others believed that no severe symptoms meant no need for screening. There was also a challenge Vaishnav had not anticipated. “As a man, I faced another challenge that I never expected in the beginning. Many people were surprised to see a man talking about menstruation, reproductive health and cervical cancer.” Over time, he came to see male involvement as a necessity. “Women’s health is not just a women’s issue. It affects families, communities and future generations.”
The most meaningful shift he has witnessed is when women who once hesitated to speak about their health become advocates for others. Speaking with The Logical Indian, he described this as the real measure of the work: “It is not only about the number of awareness sessions conducted or screenings completed. It is about helping women feel confident enough to talk about their health, make informed decisions and seek care without fear or shame.”
Dignity Over Dependency
Jigar draws a clear distinction between charity and what he calls dignity-led social impact. Charity is important in emergencies, he says, but if the work stops there, the problem often returns. “Communities do not want sympathy. They want respect.
They want to be heard. They want opportunities.” Real development, in his view, means working with communities rather than for them, and treating people as partners in change rather than recipients of assistance.
What Data Cannot Measure
SPSS Foundation tracks numbers: sessions conducted, women screened, students reached. Thousands of women have been reached through awareness programmes and thousands more through healthcare initiatives. Behind every one of those numbers, Vaishnav says, is a person, a family, a challenge and a dream. Yet he is equally clear about what figures cannot capture. “You cannot truly measure a change in mindset.” How do you measure the moment a mother decides to discuss menstruation with her daughter for the first time? How do you capture the confidence of a girl who no longer feels ashamed of a natural biological process?
For him, the most powerful change that cannot be measured is hope. “When people begin to believe that their future can be different from their present, something remarkable happens. They become willing to learn, take risks, seek opportunities and invest in themselves and their families.” Years later, he says, he may forget the exact number of participants in a programme, but he never forgets the woman who found her voice, the student who discovered a dream or the family that began to see new possibilities for their future.
Facing Failure
Vaishnav does not sidestep the harder years. In the early phases, there were funding shortfalls, rejected proposals and community mobilisation efforts that fell short of expectations. “I think anyone who has spent enough time in the social sector and says they have never faced failure, disappointment, or self-doubt is probably not being completely honest.”
What kept him going was returning to the field. “Whenever I visited a village, spoke to a student, met a woman who had gained confidence through our programs, or saw a family benefiting from healthcare support, I was reminded that this work is bigger than any individual challenge.” Small victories that never appear in headlines, a girl continuing her education, a woman deciding to get screened, a young person finding direction through career counselling, were enough to sustain the work. “I have learned that failure is not the opposite of impact; it is often part of the journey toward impact.”
What Communities Need Most
Over the years, Vaishnav has visited hundreds of villages and spoken with women, students, health workers, teachers, parents and community leaders. The most valuable insights, he says, rarely came from surveys or reports. They came from conversations. Asked what underserved communities need most today, his answer is direct. “If I had to choose just one, I would say people willing to listen.”
Funding matters. Access matters. Opportunities matter. But without listening first, organisations end up designing solutions for problems they do not fully understand. “Too often, underserved communities are treated as beneficiaries rather than partners.” Listening, however, is not the endpoint. “Listening must lead to action.”
The Meaning of Purpose
What Jigar hopes readers take away from his journey is that purpose does not require extraordinary resources or a perfect plan. “Many people think purpose has to be something extraordinary. They believe they need a perfect plan, a big platform, or significant resources before they can make a difference. My journey has taught me the opposite.”
Purpose, in his understanding, is not a single moment of clarity. “It is something that develops through life experiences, values, challenges and the choices we make every day.” And its measure is not personal achievement. “Our lives are not remembered only for what we achieved personally. They are remembered for the difference we made in the lives of others. That, for me, is the true meaning of purpose.”
For Jigar Vaishnav, that understanding was handed to him early, by a mother he lost too soon, in a lesson simple enough to carry through a lifetime: learn to give, not just to take.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Jigar Vaishnav’s journey shows that real change begins not with resources but with the willingness to listen and respect communities as partners. What does purpose mean to you?
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