This document discusses social innovations for large-scale societal transformation through sustainable livelihoods and inclusive development. It provides examples of initiatives in India and Australia that have driven social change at scale, such as BRAC, Grameen Bank, SEWA in India, and the Centre for Appropriate Technology (CAT) in Australia. It emphasizes the importance of building local capacities, mobilizing community assets, and establishing partnerships and alliances to promote social transformation. Metrics are needed to measure social impact but should be used proportionately and distinguish accountability, management, and broader impact.

1. From sustainable livelihoods to
inclusive societal transformation
through social innovation:
Australia-India dialogue
3rd FOIN Festival, New Delhi
GRII Session 6: Social Innovations for Large-Scale Societal Change
तुम जो भी करोगे वो नगण्य होगा, लेककन यह ज़रूरी है कक तुम वो
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2. Contributing (a little) to a conversation
 In a social policy and development context
how do we promote sustainable livelihoods
and societal transformation through social
innovation?
 What common frameworks and concept s
allow for better bilateral dialogue between
Australia and India?
3rd FOIN Festival, New Delhi 2017 - Dr Gavin Melels 2
तुम जो भी करोगे वो नगण्य होगा, लेककन यह ज़रूरी है कक तुम वो

3. Understanding India - helpful conversations
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4. Understanding social change – helpful books
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5. Societal transformation through social
innovation
1. build local capacities, “packages” to solve common
problems, local movements to deal with other powerful
actors
2. mobilize existing assets of marginalized groups.
3. Emphasize systematic learning by individuals and by the
organization
4. founded by leaders with the capacity to work with and
build bridges among very diverse stakeholders
5. expand impacts by investing in organization and
management systems, investing in alliance building.
6. Scaling up strategies vary across forms of social
entrepreneurship
7. Social transformation leverage and impacts vary across
innovation forms
 Four initiatives—BRAC, Grameen Bank,
SEWA, and Highlander—were characterized
by both high-reach (millions of people) and
high- transformational impacts. In the first
two cases, the initiatives created increasingly
large and sophisticated nongovernmental
organizations as vehicles for expanding their
impacts. In the third, SEWA created local,
national, and eventually international
alliances of membership organizations to
mobilize women in the informal sector.
3rd FOIN Festival, New Delhi 2017 - Dr Gavin Melels 5
Alvord, S. H., Brown, L. D., & Letts, C. W. (2004). Social
Entrepreneurship and Societal Transformation: An Exploratory
Study. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 40(3), 260–282.

6. Measuring social value: accountability,
management and impact
 Anyone who wants to finance social goods
and anyone who wants to provide them
should use metrics to clarify how inputs can
contribute to outcomes, as well as to clarify
choices and trade-offs. But they should
abandon metrics that obscure these choices
or that pretend to offer a spurious objectivity.
And they should use metrics only in
proportionate ways. It’s not sensible for a
small NGO to invest scarce resources in
apparently elaborate estimates of social
value—not least because these estimates are
bound to crumble under serious scrutiny
 Meanwhile, larger NGOs that do need
measures of social value should clearly
distinguish between those that are primarily
about external accountability, those that help
internal management, and those that
support assessments of broader patterns of
social impact. If an organization is using the
same method for all three, its findings are
almost certainly flawed. People involved in
funding social value, whether at the stage of
promising innovations or of large-scale
practice, likewise need sharper common
frameworks.
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Mulgan, G. (2010). Measuring Social Value. Stanford
Social Innovation Review, (Summer), 38–43.

7. Household level
framework for
livelihoods
 Institutional innovations (formal
and informal) required, e.g.
micro-credit
 Increased assets per se is not
enough for household and
social change
 Livelihood strategies are
enabled by institutional change
and lead to multiple benefits
 SLF is relevant to social
innovation and transformation
in India and Australia
Institutional innovation, e.g. micro-credit leads to
increased capitals and reduced vulnerability, e.g.
precarious living, enabling different livelihood
strategies with positive livelihood outcomes
The relevant institutional innovations to
structures and processes can lead to
societal transformation with respect to
gender, power, politics, etc. beyond the
short term outcomes
Annual SOIL
Increasing assets per se
does not lead to better
sustainable outcomes
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8. Why greater focus on sustainable livelihoods for social
policy and development practice?
Hall, A., & Midgley, J. (2004). Social Policy and Rural Development: From
Modernization to Sustainable Livelihoods. In Social Policy for Development (pp.
87–113). London & Thousand Oaks: SAGE Publications.
 Rather than taking as its point of departure
the conventional notion of poverty as
measured against income or consumption
criteria, a livelihoods framework assumes that
people pursue multiple objectives; not just
higher incomes but also improved health,
access to education, reduced vulnerability
and less exposure to risk. This is achieved by
drawing upon a range of capital assets:
financial, human, physical, natural and social.
Patnaik, S., & Prasad, C. S. (2015). Revisiting sustainable livelihoods: Insights
from implementation studies in India. Vision: The Journal of Business
Perspective, 18(4), 353–358. http://doi.org/10.1177/0972262914553258
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 While there appear to be more studies using
SLA in Africa, Indian planners still grapple with
integrating these ideas and frameworks in their
plans. Livelihoods are a recent addition to the
rich repository of poverty alleviation
programmes in Five-Year Plan documents.
These programs are typically categorized as
wage employment; self-employment; minimum
needs programmes, and area development
programmes (Mahajan et al., 2008) and
discussions on livelihoods in India often are fit
within self-employment programmes

9. Australian examples of societal
transformation through social
innovation?
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10. Centre for Appropriate
Technology
 Our core activities fall under six key business areas:
 Technology innovation and application
 Applied project design, management and professional
services
 Community engagement, planning and facilitation
 Place based accredited training, skills development and
capacity building
 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander enterprise and jobs
 Infrastructure design, engineering, construction and
fabrication
CAT Ltd is an Aboriginal and Torres Strait
Islander (ATSI) controlled business with a
majority ATSI Membership, Board and
Chairman. CAT has a core commitment to
providing employment opportunities for
Aboriginal people who currently
comprise 40% of parent company staff
members. Based on a 38 hectare site 5km
south of Alice Springs, CAT also
comprises of offices in Darwin and Cairns.
CAT has a national focus, currently
undertaking projects across central and
northern regions of the Northern
Territory and in Western Australia,
Queensland and South Australia.
http://www.cat.org.au/ Acknowledgement to
A/P Kurt Seeman, Swinburne University
Davies, J., White, J., Wright, A., Maru, Y., & LaFlamme, M. (2008). Applying the
sustainable livelihoods approach in Australian desert Aboriginal development. The
Rangeland Journal, 30(1), 55. http://doi.org/10.1071/RJ07038
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11. Hybrid social enterprise -
Community Solar Co-Op
Shares Sells Out in Minutes
Pingala partnered with the environmentally-
conscious Young Henrys brewery in
Newtown, Sydney to build a solar farm on its
roof, which will save an estimated 127 tonnes
of greenhouse gas emissions a year. The
newly launched Pingala Cooperative, which
sits alongside the Pingala Not for Profit,
allows the organisation to raise funds from
member investors to instal solar panels on its
partner businesses. “We then lease the solar
to the business, so they pay us a fee to be
able to use the equipment as though it were
their own, and through that we get a
revenue stream that allows us to pay our
costs and generate a small profit,” Pingala
secretary Tom Nockolds told Pro Bono
Australia News.
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https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2016/08/communi
ty-solar-co-op-shares-sells-minutes/