Rahul Goswami and Summaiya Afreen met closed doors early. Instead of waiting for them to open, they went looking for rooms where they could learn, and then built one of their own.
If you had met Rahul Goswami as a young man, he says, you would not have seen a future social entrepreneur. You would have seen someone trying to figure out how to survive.
He grew up around domestic violence, left home at around eighteen and spent time living in a slum, building a life without the security many people take for granted. He still had ambitions: to study, to build a career, to live with dignity. He pursued an MBA, but in his second year he could not afford the fees and had to leave. “It was about watching a door close when I had worked hard to reach it,” he recalls.
Summaiya Afreen’s questions began somewhere quieter. Growing up in a conservative family, she felt the gap between what she wanted for herself and what society expected of girls. At seventeen, an incident left her with a deep sense of helplessness and changed how she understood safety and freedom. For a long time she carried it alone. Eventually she began to see that it was connected to something larger: many girls learn to adjust, stay silent and negotiate their dreams around other people’s expectations. Two different journeys, one shared realisation: people’s circumstances should not limit the possibilities of their futures.
Going Where the Learning Was
Neither of them grew up in an enabling environment. Education was out of reach, exposure was limited, and nobody was handing them a path. So they made their own.
They began visiting some of the country’s top colleges, travelling to IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IITs, IIM Kozhikode. They did not go as visitors, they participated, competed and learned from the students and ideas they found there. Each campus widened what felt possible. Then came a paper presentation. They won first prize: ₹25,000.
It was not a large sum, but instead of dividing it and splitting away, they decided to put it to work. In 2009, that prize money became the seed of Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti.
“I would like to say I began with a clear theory of change,” Rahul says, “but my understanding developed through experience.” What he and Summaiya knew was what it meant to have potential that circumstances could not accommodate. Lakshya became their attempt to build the space they had needed themselves, one where a person’s background is never the final judgement on their future.
Voice, Choice and Equity
Lakshya works to break the intergenerational cycle of poverty for children, young people and women in underserved communities across low income communities. Its work spans education, life skills, employability, and leadership, and it rests on three principles.
Voice: the confidence to express yourself.
Choice: the freedom to shape your own future.
Equity: fair access to opportunity, regardless of where you are born or how much your family earns.
For Summaiya, these principles are not slogans. “Access to opportunity is not enough if people do not feel entitled to use it,” she says. That is why Lakshya listens before it designs. Empowerment, in her view, is not about speaking on behalf of girls. It is about creating spaces where they can discover their own voices.
What Change Looks Like
The results are visible. One of the outcomes Rahul is proudest of is that 89% of students identified as being at risk of dropping out are now continuing in school. Through educational support, mentoring, life skills and engagement with families, Lakshya helps children stay connected to school and keep imagining a different future.
Since 2009, the organisation has reached more than 50,000 children and young people. Its Jagriti Fellowship and I CAN Job Readiness Program help young people, especially girls and women from low-income communities, move toward employment and economic independence.
Numbers are only part of the picture. The change Rahul values most is quieter: the moment a young person stops seeing themselves as limited by their background and starts seeing themselves as someone who can make decisions, build skills and create a different future.
A Journey That Went Global
The story that began with a college prize has since travelled far. Rahul and Summaiya have represented Lakshya in eight countries. Summaiya’s path has included the Global Good Fund Fellowship, Goldman Sachs 10,000 Women Entrepreneur Program at IIM Bangalore, and the Gratitude Network Fellowship in San Francisco. In 2025, she took her journey to the TEDx stage, with a talk on breaking the “good girl script”.
Rahul shared on TEDx about his journey from surviving domestic violence to building a social enterprise. He was named a Scotland India Impact Link Fellow and a Changemaker at Global Action on Poverty. He received the Dr. BR Ambedkar International Pride Award, and he is part of the Catalyst Leadership Program in the USA in 2026.
They call these milestones, not destinations. Each one carried the Lakshya story to new rooms and brought new learning back to the communities it serves.
Building Something That Outlasts Its Founders
Both founders are candid that the work is hard. Poverty affects education, confidence, health and employment, often across generations, and short-term interventions cannot undo it. Funding is uncertain. Building an institution also carries a personal cost.
For Rahul, persistence once meant simply working harder. Experience taught him that resilience also means asking for help, sharing responsibility and building systems. “Empathy needs structure,” he says.
That belief shapes what comes next. Lakshya is investing in local leadership, stronger systems and a sustainable funding model, with the aim of becoming an institution that can outlive its founders and still stay close to the communities that shaped it.
Rahul hopes the wider sector will move from doing things for people to building power and opportunity with them. His own belief ties the whole story together: people should not have to overcome every barrier alone before they can fulfil their potential.
The Logical Indian’s Perspective
Access to quality education, life skills and meaningful opportunities should never depend on a person’s economic background or where they are born. Initiatives like Lakshya Jeevan Jagriti remind us that social change begins by listening to communities, understanding their challenges and creating spaces where people can recognise their own potential.
Empowerment is not simply about providing assistance; it is about building confidence, encouraging independent choices and ensuring that individuals have the resources to shape their futures with dignity. Sustainable change also requires collective responsibility from communities, institutions and policymakers. How can we work together to ensure that every child and young person, regardless of their circumstances, gets a fair chance to learn, grow and succeed?
A young man once watched a door close. Today he and Summaiya are building more of them, and making sure people have the confidence and capability to walk through.
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