Programming with Purpose with Sangita Patel

In our third episode, of “From Campus to Career: Development Practitioners in Action,” we are in conversation with Sangita Patel. 

Sangita is an experienced international development professional with a career spanning over 20 years, currently serving as the Vice President of Program Management and Compliance and Plan International Canada. Throughout her career, Sangita focused on supporting women's economic prosperity and is a dedicated champion for children’s rights. She has previously worked in both the public and private sectors, and has lived and worked in Asia and West Africa.

Sangita joined Plan International Canada in 2005 and has since worked closely with offices across the Plan Federation to support high-quality programming and stewardship of donor funding. She has played a leadership role in education programming that has facilitated and championed for out-of-school children to enter the formal school system. Sangita studied international development at the undergraduate and master's degree level at the University of Toronto and is committed to delivering results that make a positive impact on people's lives.

Join us to learn more about Sangita’s journey, from her first co-op experience to collaborating on transformative programs worldwide, and hear the lessons she’s learned along the way.

The Knowledge Equity Lab's Season 4, podcast series, "From Campus to Career" features conversations with some of the stellar alumni from University of Toronto’s International Development Studies Co-op program, uncovering the stories behind their careers in global development. From the classroom to the field, these conversations trace the choices, pivots, and passions that shaped their journeys and continue to inspire new ways of thinking about global and local development.

Transcript

Malika Daya: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Knowledge Equity Lab’s podcast, “From Campus to Career, Development Practitioners in Action.” In this series, we're speaking to some of the stellar alumni from University of Toronto's International Development Studies Co-op program, learning about their time in the program and beyond, exploring the diverse choices, pathways, and experiences that shaped their careers in global development.

I'm Malika Daya, your host for this season and a former graduate of the IDS Co-op program at UTSC. 

On today's episode, we'll be speaking with Sangita Patel. Sangita is an experienced international development professional with a career spanning over 20 years. She currently leads a team at Plan International Canada, responsible for program quality and effectiveness. Throughout her career, Sangita focused on supporting women's economic prosperity and is a dedicated champion for children's rights. She has previously worked in both the public and private sectors and has lived and worked in Asia and West Africa. 

In 2005, Sangita joined Plan International Canada and has since worked closely with offices across the Plan Federation to support high quality programming and stewardship of donor funding. She has played a leadership role in education programming that has facilitated and championed for out of school children to enter the formal school system. Sangita studied international development at the undergraduate and master's degree level at the University of Toronto and is committed to delivering results that make a positive impact on people's lives. 

We're so excited to welcome to our podcast, Sangita Patel.

So thank you so much for joining us on this podcast. We've heard so much about you and we're really excited to hear about your experience as a development practitioner. So can you share a little bit about what inspired you to go into international development?

Sangita Patel: Sure. Well, my parents immigrated to Canada with my oldest sister in the late 70s. And it wasn't until I was 12 years old that my parents actually sent me to India to meet some of the family and to just kind of understand more. And when I was in India, firstly, my parents are from a very rural village in Gujarat. And I was quite, very, surprised at the difference between what things look like from one side of the world to the other. And it was a real awakening for me in terms of what lives people live and the inequality that's there. And particularly for me as a girl, I think it was really interesting for me to see cousins and people, children who looked a lot like me, but had very different situations and different access to education, different ways accessing education, time to study, quality of what they received when they got to school.

It was so different and it really got my mind thinking. And at the same time, I had an uncle who took me to all these community-based initiatives that he was a part of through a service organization, a small one. So I got to see really simple programming in some ways, but eyeglass clinics where people would go and get their eyes checked and be given some free glasses or kind of community drives around health clinics, visited orphanages, just different things. I think I was so impressed with just what grassroots, like really community-based work is, like what it's like to be in the community and serve that community. And that just really inspired me. So that was kind of, I guess, the initial seeds of what made me interested in international development work.

Malika Daya: Thank you. And it is so lovely to hear that your family has a practice of community organizing, and that was your way of exploring and understanding and getting to know more about international development. So from there, what led you into your path to take IDS in university? And can you tell us a little bit about your journey in the IDS program, perhaps where you did your co-op, and then into your career and where you are now?

Sangita Patel: Sure. So my path was, I think from that initial time of interest, being in India for a few months and seeing all those things, I came home and started to study it a little bit more, but I was from a smaller town in Ontario and there weren't that many opportunities actually to do those things. So I remember in high school, we would organize different events and awareness raising and I participated in some drives and fundraisers. But it was really by chance because back then you just had university catalogs to decide how you're going to university. So I quite randomly picked up a catalog that happened to be from UTSC and as I'm flipping through it and looking at options, I saw the IDS co-op program and thought that's exactly what I want to do. And it was the only, there were very, very few at the time who were doing that kind of work and offering those types of programs. 

So that's what I went into. I ended up in the IDS Co-op program. And in my fourth year, I did my IDS Co-op program with an organization that was then called Foster Parents Plan, which is now called Plan Canada, which is where I work now. And so I kind of came full circle in that sense. While I was with Plan, I was actually based in South India. I was supporting a series of programs, working with the teams to test a series of tools that they were using to try to look at how, at the time called gender sensitive, their programming was and also how child friendly they were and how children were impacted for different kinds of programming. Both in terms of who was benefiting and how they were benefiting from the programming.

Malika Daya: That's incredible. And it seems like themes of gender and youth engagement were always really a part of your practice, even prior to coming into international development, but also in your co-op. So from your co-op, after you finished the program, what did your career look like? What did the first few years look like? And how did it take you to where you are now?

Sangita Patel: After I did my IDS co-op, I went into a CIDA youth internship. So I was still very interested in gender equality. I started to look more and more in my studies. I took a course in microcredit and small medium enterprise. So I did a couple of different things and I was very curious about them. I did a CIDA, then called CIDA, now Global Affairs Canada internship program.

And I was in Indonesia looking at small and medium enterprises and also looking at a kind of group lending, which is very similar to what I was doing in India. One of the things I was doing when I was on that co-op was also I got to visit, my gosh, almost a hundred different women's self-help groups, which are like peer lending groups. So a group of women coming together with their very small savings, adding them up over time and lending it to each other. So I was very interested in this model and I ended up having an opportunity to work with a group in Indonesia who were doing something a bit similar to that, maybe at a larger scale.

So that's what I did for a while. I ended up coming back early because of the security situation there. And then I did a few things. I worked a little bit with the private sector. So in trade and kind of looking at this interface between trade and international development, I tried that for a while. I worked, I did a little bit of work at a government organization. So I was working for what is now called Global Affairs Canada. I did that for a little bit, didn't really, none of that really fit right for me. And eventually did my masters at U of T again, in the political economy of development. And then ended up coming back to, I ended up Plan for a little bit again, Plan Canada. And then I ended up working for another international NGO in Bangladesh. I did that for a while.

And so I would say that my early career after graduating was full of lots of little, like shorter term work, just trying to figure out what made sense to me, what fit well with what I was interested in and spoke to my values and my passion. And in the end, I ended up actually coming back to, well, what was then Foster Parents Plan, now known as Plan Canada. And that was 20 years ago. I am still there. I've had a lot of different roles in the organization, but all of them very much focused on programs, program work, the quality of it, how we support different parts of the organization. So that's what I do now. I work for Plan Canada. I'm right now the Vice President of Program Quality and Effectiveness. 

So my role is really, and with the team that I support, we work together in our support of our different country offices with the quality of the programming that we do. Gained lots of different kinds of donors. Plan works in 80 different countries. So it's really been quite an experience to be able to work and engage with different parts of that throughout my career.

Malika Daya: It's really cool to see how so much of your career and your passion has come full circle. Like talking about seeing and witnessing the community programming and organizing when you took that trip to visit your family, but also your co-op being at Plan and now working in Plan as Vice President of programming. That's really incredible. And so as you went along your career, were there any key learnings or challenges that came up that taught you about what you wanted to do within development, but also about the sector?

Sangita Patel: Yeah, I think that there are always those unexpected turns in a career or challenges. I think what I learned early on was that it's helpful if that something just doesn't feel right, to be able to call it and to kind of move ahead and look for something that makes more sense. I think that I was really, especially kind of right before and after my masters, I was just looking for what fit, what really spoke to me and in the end I was glad that I had those options or the privilege to be able to just kind of end one experience and start a new one.  I think that that in itself was really, really helpful. And in terms of key learnings, on top of that, I think the key learning for me was just to be able to ask questions, to reach out, to find good mentors, to listen to good advice, to really experience things before I decided that they weren't for me as well. I tried a lot of things. I had the privilege of some time to try different things and I think that really served me well.

Malika Daya: Great advice. Also, it takes a lot of courage to be able to try something and invest a lot of time and energy in it and then realize that this might not be the fit and to decide to try something else. What do you feel most fulfilling about your work now?

Sangita Patel: The most fulfilling part of my work now is, there's a few things. I think that one, it is exciting to work for an organization that works in so many different places and so many different contexts. So I am constantly learning. I think that's been an important part of what makes this work fulfilling. I think it's more important than ever. At my heart, I really see how important it is to invest in children and their rights and especially equality for girls. And I think that the world needs it more now than ever. So I find that work very exciting. 

I've had the privilege in my career to be able to travel and see work with Plan and through the local partners that we work with. And that is incredible. I've had the chance to engage with such amazing, resilient people in organizations and to see that passion of people and what they do. I think that that's probably what keeps me the most fueled in terms of work. I remember once I was working on a project in Sierra Leone and it was right after the terrible civil war they had there and  in communities that lost everything and were displaced for a very long time. The project that I was working on was on the Far East part of Sierra Leone and the capital was on the Far West. And at one point the conflict was so terrible that a lot of those people and communities living in the East moved all the way to the West. And then they came back eventually. One of the first things they did was they were gathering children under trees and teaching them. Were they skilled? Like did they have teaching degrees? Probably not. Was it particularly successful in terms of materials and learning? I don't know. There were probably no books, and there were no school buildings and there weren't qualified teachers. 

But like this passion to educate their children, understanding how important it was to their future. I think that it stuck with me more than any other example, because it really reminds you how common those things are actually across the world. Parents and caregivers love children, love their children, and they really want the best for them. And there's so much promise in that. It's such an investment. It really, yeah, I think that stuck to me. So how could you not want to be excited? How could you not be excited to see that kind of passion and to just be able to come alongside it and support it? Because it really is, it is quite amazing what community resilience can do.

Malika Daya: Yeah, and how some of the best community organizers are the people at the grassroots, are the people who are experiencing crisis, So what does a typical day in your current role look like? How are you able to support these organizations? What does the tangible work look like?

Sangita Patel: Wow. So no two days ever look the same in my world. I guess that's another thing that makes it interesting is no two days ever look the same. But I would say overall, my days start a little early, mostly because I'm navigating a few different time zones. So up early and engage with different parts of the organization. And it could be anything. I can be working with our communications team on how we are engaging with the Canadian public and engaging with all of our supporters and what that looks like. It is receiving data and project impact results from our country offices to see how different grants are doing and what's happening there, what technical support we need to provide or how we're pivoting. I think that there's a lot of engaging with our donors and really being an interpreter for our country offices to understand what requirements look like and all those things and vice versa to be able to communicate back what's happening with communities specifically. 

My team spends a lot of time advocating on behalf of the projects that we have in terms of funding and in terms of being able to share learnings. I spend a lot of time being able to pull together learnings from different places because we work in a large organization and there's so many different things happening. We have a role to be able to pull together aggregate learnings across and to be able to share them out with the right folks and to make sure that that's improving our quality as well. So a typical day is never the same. There is no typical day, but certainly interesting work and lots of different settings, but all kind of committed around children and around quality for girls. 

In terms of impactful, I think what I would say is that if I can add to the idea what's so impactful, I have a chance to really work and support a team that is working on so many different topics. So whether it is economic empowerment programming for young people, or if it's healthcare and ensuring and supporting around access to quality healthcare or education. There's so many different things, what I've noticed lately is just this convergence around concerns around climate and how that's impacting everything. And to see, even when we talk about gender inequality, but also what transformative change looks like, we do a lot of work on what are the barriers? Like what are the actual barriers getting in the way of girls attending school and to be able to look at it from a more of a strategic perspective. So I think that those are all kinds of the things that make the work impactful and keep my days full.

Malika Daya: Yeah, especially in this moment when it comes to the increasing urgency of the climate crisis and how it's affecting migration as well. As a practitioner, how has your perspective of development changed over the years? And how do you see the future of international development, specifically in the work that you're doing, evolving?

Sangita Patel: I'm working in a sector that's evolving very quickly. There's so much going on, especially just in 2025 alone, a lot has changed. I think that when I look at the sector, I think that I see some good things happening, but I think I see a lot of challenges ahead. When I talk about climate, when you talk about kind of the challenges, I think that this is a really critical stage.

I think there are more humanitarian crises happening right now. More children are displaced and they stay displaced for longer. There are more children on the move now than ever before. Like there's a lot to think about and there's a lot of really concerning things happening. There is certainly a change around funding. There is less funding and funding is very important. So I don't mean to downplay that at all. But I think there's also other things happening at the same time that we have to think through them. 

For me, I think we need to think more about how we connect people across the world on these issues. I think that there is a tendency to speak in soundbites at times, but when things are actually quite complex and the language to explain those things. I think the world needs a lot of empathy and I think we're a little bit short on it sometimes, I'm afraid. So I think that when we talk about this moment, it's also a moment to think about like, how do we talk about empathy? How do we talk about solidarity? What does that look like? There's children all over the world.  Everyone knows a couple, I'm sure. So how do you see the commonalities and not just the differences? I feel like that is something that we need to think about and really sharpen it. 

Wonderful things are happening. Incredible things are happening in different countries in different ways. And I think that we need to do a better job. And I think that's going to be very important because as international official development assistance declines, I think that we need to lean more into solidarity and people caring across the world, really. I think that this sector is really speaking more now, finally, about anti-racism and decolonization. These are really critical things, complicated things. But even the organization I work with is on a real journey right now, especially around localization, this idea of how important it is, money and resources in the hands of local implementing partners to carry on the work that they do. And I think that we are at a real moment in the sector to really decide in a time of scarcity of funding, in a time of all this upheaval, do we double down on exactly how we've done things until now, or do we use this as a moment to stop and sit back and think, what are we doing? Where are we going? What is the value added? I work for a large international organization. I'm very committed and passionate, and I'm very appreciative as an organization that's really looking at issues of solidarity, looking at issues of equality, and really in trying to sharpen that. I think that that helps. 

I think there's a lot of work to be done in terms of equal partnerships with organizations in different parts of the world, for lack of a better term right now, I would say the Global South. Like how are we sharing power? How are we convening? How are we using our voice to help in ways that we haven't done as much of before? I think that those are all really important things to think about when we look at the future of this sector and the role we can play and the value we can kind of add to it.

Malika Daya: Yeah, I think everything you said is so powerful. What is especially striking me is how do we continue to build solidarity within the various communities and spheres of influences we operate within. And also thinking about how community relationships are probably what's going to be the one thing to help us survive. So absolutely to everything you just said. 

I feel like for a lot of students, and I feel like when we're talking about apathy in today's world, a lot of people feel helpless when they're grappling with the complex and urgent deep rooted global inequities that are before us. How do you stay motivated and choose to continue to take action in a world with so many urgent crises and many difficult systems that sometimes feel unmoving?

Sangita Patel: Thanks for the question. I think it's because of where I get to sit and who I get to speak to and that I get to see young, passionate women in countries that they are in, really stepping up, making those choices, like really articulating their needs and moving them forward together. I get to see that. I get to see and engage with people, young women who kind of could come together and say, you know, “we're really worried about access to health care as a teenager and I'm uncomfortable going to the clinic because I can get judged for whatever I say, I think something needs to be done” and being able to reach out together and to engage communities and engage organizations to be able to actually work on that together. Or a group of even younger children say, you know, like, “I'm really young, I don't want to get married. I'm too young for this. I want to go to school.” And then to see that voice and to really come alongside such great, great energy and really wonderful ideas. 

I think that sometimes we think even in programming that somehow community members or girls are somehow passive in these processes and that's not the case at all actually. Quite a lot of opinions, great ones and really our job to support and to facilitate that is what is important. So I appreciate it, I know that there is a lot going on and there is a sense of apathy. I'm a person who's gotten to see it, see it though. So for despite all the challenges and the things happening in the world in different ways, big and small, there's lots to be concerned about, but there's also a time to just double down on what you know works and what you know to be true. 

And for me, it doesn't waver, but I do have just this benefit of, if I could transport people to the places I've been and things I've seen, I don't think there would be apathy. It's just such a difficult story to tell sometimes, that it kind of, with all the other noise I think that people have in their lives, it's just hard to tune it out and to just really care and to see it as connected. That an issue in Canada can be an issue in another part of the world, that my wellbeing and your wellbeing are so interconnected. And that we shouldn't tune it out for each other, but we should think about what that means and how it can make us stronger. Because, I think that the inequality, I guess, is the biggest thing, is the inequality in this world is just increasing and it creates differences and it creates us and them. And I think that is the biggest risk.

Malika Daya: Yeah, also hearing you speak makes me think about how many communities don't have the privilege to be apathetic or like not take action. And here in the West, it's easy to fall into cynicism or to fall into apathy as a way of absolving oneself of the responsibility to take action, you know, sometimes.

Sangita Patel: I hear you. It's there, that apathy. But also I see so many Canadians who care, who contribute on a regular basis. They open their wallets, even though they have to make choices, but are still committed to this. Lots of donors, big and small, who are still committed to this work. And that in itself is remarkable. And those are the things I think we need to celebrate and focus on a little bit more. Because I think that was what will help open, kind of open other people's kind of openness to possibility of what could happen if we look at this a little bit differently.

Malika Daya: Totally, and strengthening those solidarities for sure. My final question to you is for students or young professionals who are entering the sector, what advice would you give to them? Maybe they're starting the IDS program or maybe they're just finishing up their co-ops, but if you could look back on your journey or yourself at that period of time, what would you tell yourself or students like you now?

Sangita Patel: That's a great question, especially now because I think the field is evolving significantly and the overall aid architecture is in itself changing. So what I would say, I would say it's really important to be curious. And if you're not a great asker of questions, I wasn't at that age, create space and learn how to ask really good questions and thoughtful questions. And create space in your mind to reflect and kind of formulate those questions and keep learning. I think that that's very important. 

I don't think that we can talk about development without talking about power and privilege and anti-racism and decolonization and what our role is in all of those pieces. And those are difficult questions, difficult issues. But I think it's okay to sit in your discomfort a little bit and then to figure out how you meaningfully engage in this dialogue and the solidarity around the world in a way that doesn't reinforce all those harmful things that I think that even our sector was guilty of early on, and to see it as a journey as well. 

I think that you should follow your gut a little bit if something doesn't feel right and don't waste too much time. I mean, get in there, learn it, take a good look around. But if your gut is still saying that you're just not in the right place, sometimes it's better just to acknowledge it and move to the next thing. I would say that you really do need to find some good mentors, people who are really invested in your success and are willing to open up their contacts. Their guidance and good honest feedback is so hard sometimes to come across, but it's so vital to listen really deeply. To understand that, especially if you're coming from a Western context, you are not an expert. But the experts actually are in the communities that we serve. That context is everything. 

And so to really think about your role. There's some great literature out there now about the role of international NGOs, if that's what people choose to look at. The role of kind of intermediaries within this overall development architecture. There's some good, good, good pieces in there to think about what our role should be and then to play those roles kind of and hold them carefully and respectfully and really thoughtfully. Because I think there is a great role to play for different actors in different parts of the world, but to understand the privilege that you come from, the power that you have, and then how you really use it to amplify voices and needs and demands of people and communities that we're actually trying to work with.

Malika Daya: Thank you. Thank you so much, Sangita. Also, thank you for all of the knowledge you've shared with us, but all of the work you've done within the sector. It's really inspiring. And I'm sure there are many students and early career practitioners who are going to be listening and who are going to find so many seeds of inspiration for their own careers from this. So thank you. We really appreciate you. And wishing you all of the good energy for all of the endeavors to come.

That's a wrap on today's episode of “From Campus to Career.” Thank you listeners for joining us. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and follow the Knowledge Equity Lab on LinkedIn and Instagram for updates on our upcoming episodes. Hope you'll tune in for future episodes with some incredible development practitioners.