Develop Your India

4th National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship @ XLRI (Jan 27-29, 2012)

2011-12-10T16:02:00.003+05:30

Dear friends,

I am happy to inform you that we are organizing the 4^th National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship at XLRI Jamshedpur (India) during Jan 27-29, 2012.

During last few years, rural sector has not only opened up immense possibilities for entrepreneurship, but has also sprouted many innovative social entrepreneurial models. Moreover, rejuvenation of rural landscape and livelihoods is also emerging a significant national priority. Even government schemes, e.g., National Rural Livelihood Mission, National Rural Health Mission, Prime Minister’s Rural Development Fellowship scheme, etc. envisage a significant role of social entrepreneurs in rural revival.

Correspondingly, this year, the conference theme – Entrepreneurship for Rural Revival - aims to create a platform to explore the opportunities and challenges for social ventures in rural sector.

The conference design will entail the following panel sessions, where social entrepreneurs/ development sector professionals will share their experiences, issues and challenges:

· Rural Revival: Opportunities & Challenges

· Technology, Development & Inclusion

· Models of Sustainable Farming

· Solutions for Rural Healthcare

· Innovations in Rural Revitalization

· Emerging Rural Ventures – A Showcase

· Creating Markets for Rural Producers

· Building Self-Reliant Rural Communities

More information about the conference is available at:

http://4th-se-conference-at-xlri.blogspot.com/

I am happy to share that the response to our invitations to proposed speakers/ panelists has been quite encouraging. We are still awaiting more confirmations, and hopefully will have the complete list of speakers ready in a week or so. Like earlier years, we also anticipate a conference community of around 150-170 people.

I am enclosing the Registration Form for the conference for your reference, and will invite you to join us in this event. (The Registration Form can also be downloaded here)

I will also be grateful if you can share this mail with others who may be interested.

With warm regards

Madhukar

------

Dr Madhukar Shukla

Chairperson, Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability (FACES)

Coordinator – 4^th National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship

XLRI School of Business and Human Resources

CH Area (East)

Jamshedpur 831001 (India)

Ph #: 91-657-665 3333 (epbx)/ 91-9431113764

seconference@xlri.ac.in

madhukar@xlri.ac.in

http://4th-se-conference-at-xlri.blogspot.com/

Confirmed Speakers:

(Nov 27^th, ‘2011)

Ajay Maniar

Principal

Aavishkaar Venture Management Services

Amit Jain

CEO/Co-Founder

eHealth Point

Dhirendra Kumar IFS

Managing Director

Jharcraft

Elango Rangaswamy

Panchayat President

Kutumbakkam

Gijs Spoor

Founder & CEO

Zameen Organic

Dr Joe Madiath

Executive Director

Gram Vikas

Kirti P Mishra

Partner

MART

Mrityunjay Tiwari

Founder-Project Head

Akhand Jyoti Eye Hospital

Mukti Bosco

Secretary General

Healing Fields Foundation

Paul Basil

Founder & CEO

Villgro

Pradeep Ghosh

Founder

OASiS

Pravesh Sharma, IAS

Managing Director

Small Farmers’ Agribusiness Consortium

Dr Radha Basu

CEO

Anudip Foundation

Sanjeeva Srivastwa

Founder

Organic Bihar

Satyan Mishra

Founder & MD

Drishtee Foundation

Stan Thekaekara

Director

Just Change India

Sundara Rajan Sampath

Founder & CEO

Janani Agriserve

Dr Vanita Viswanath

Secretary & CEO

Udyogini

THE $300 HOUSE-for-the-POOR

2011-10-18T22:23:00.001+05:30

THE CONCEPT

The $300 House was first described in a Harvard Business Review blog post by Vijay Govindarajan and Christian Sarkar. Initially, we just wanted to put the idea out there, but now, due to the tremendous response, we've decided to see how far we can go toward making this idea a reality.

We started with five simple questions:

How can organic, self-built slums be turned into livable housing?
What might a house-for-the-poor look like?
How can world-class engineering and design capabilities be utilized to solve the problem?
What reverse-innovation lessons might be learned by the participants in such a project?
How could the poor afford to buy this house?

The goal is to design, build, and deploy a simple dwelling which keeps a family safe from the weather, allows them to sleep at night, and gives them a little bit of dignity. If we can give the poor a chance to live safely and build an inclusive ecosystem of services around them which includes, clean water, sanitation, health services, family planning, education, and micro enterprise, maybe we can start reducing the disease of poverty. By helping create this ecosystem, we believe companies can make money while providing services needed by the poor at an affordable cost. The poor deserve a chance, a real chance, to make it out of poverty.

To do this, we'll bring together people, institutions, and businesses in a "creation space" to:
1) turn this idea a reality, and
2) test it out in the field.

In terms of progress, we've just begun:

OUR APPROACH

We're bringing together three sets of players - the residents of the $300 House, the designers of the house, and the implementers - the organizations (private and public) who will build the "change we want to see."

The residents of the $300 House can be in any part of the world. We're planning to start with a house designed for three specific countries - India, Haiti, and Indonesia.

Dartmouth (through VG) is sending teams of students to India and Haiti to work with groups on the ground to evaluate the prospects, challenges, ecosystem opportunities, community strengths, etc.

The designers will be you and your friends - amateurs, students, and professional designers. We're going to ask you to submit your concepts and ideas in a simple but usable format. Stay tuned for the announcement! We'll choose one or more models or combinations to create the first prototypes for a pilot project in the field. We also invite professional architectural and design firms to step up in this collaborative effort.

The organizations will include non-profits (NGOs), for profit vendors, and of course public organizations - both regional and national governmental agencies. As execution becomes our priority, we'll work with existing, trustworthy organizations to construct/assemble the $300 House in the locations selected. We're also thinking about the building skillsets required and training community members to become a part of this ecosystem - as a way to build a sustainable economic structure.

Once we learn how to do this, the organizations we work with will be able to scale the solution. At that point, we will be prepared to expand to help other countries around the world.

Finally, the lessons we learn from this building process should be applied (we hope) to building the next generation of green housing in the US and the developed world. We see this as a clear reverse innovation opportunity as well.

Let us know if you want to join the project!

Thanks for your interest and support,

Vijay Govindarajan and
Christian Sarkar

suggestions? contact us: info@300house.com

'one mobile per human being'

2011-10-18T22:18:00.002+05:30

Path breaking ideas that will change the world

Access to communication through a mobile phone has changed lives of people in urban, semi-urban, semi-rural and rural areas as well as across all continents and countries. It is universal. It gives them access to livelihoods, health, education, rights, water, electricity, road, house, financial transactions, internet and everything else. Now mobile is also a computer, watch, tv, radio, audio player, movie player, camera, calculator, alarm clock, GPS, internet surfing and everything else put into one. Cellphone manufacturers can easily produce a phone for less than $10, in India you can possibly get IIT to design one that will cost only $1 in mass manufacturing. We only need to provide about 4 billion mobiles for free and it can be done at a cost of $4 billion. Almost every mobile service provider from almost 500+ mobile operators in the world will be happy to chip in to do so as it directly gets them service revenues if they provide free phones. Service providers like Vodafone, Airtel, AT&T etc will buy phones from mobile manufacturers such as Nokia, Siemens, LG etc and provide free lifetime connection and free 3 months of outgoing service. After that user pays for service in pre-paid fashion. Incoming is lifetime free.

Impact
Safety
Weather forecast can be sent as sms to fishermen along the coast so that they will not go into the sea during bad weather or if they are already in the sea, they can reach the coast quickly. Millions of lives can be saved every year.
Savings
A local call on landline costs between Re 1 to Rs. 3. With cellphone, it can be done for 50 paise. For poor people this is huge savings.IncomeFor skilled labour such as plumber, electrician, carpenter, daily wage labour, farm worker, mason, painter etc, a mobile means their customers can easily reach them at any time. This leads to increase in their business and earnings.

Information

Any type of information can be accessed using sms google search. Local business details, prices of crop, items etc in other markets, cities.
Facilities
Mobile can double up as watch, alarm clock, calculator, radio, audio player, movie player, internet access.
ATM
Using banking services of companies like eko.in, mobile can act as ATM to deposit or withdraw cash, even take small loans.
Livelihoods
Mobile repair, solar mobile charging stations and other livelihood opportunities can be generated in millions if every human being has a mobile.
Government
Govts can send details of welfare schemes, important policy changes, other relevant messages to entire population in an instant.
News
General news, public service messages, awareness programs, educational and health programs can be sent easily by text messages.
Service Providers
Utility bills for water, electricity, phone, cable tv, dth, Taxes such as property, water, road can be billed and collected easily over mobile phone.
Unique Identification
Each human being can have his/her cell phone # as a unique identifier for the person.
M-commerce
Air, train, bus tickets, products, services can be purchased using m-commerce. Banking transactions can be done.

Results
Benefits to Cellphone operators
4 billion new cellphones @ Rs. 250/$5 per month average service revenue will result into annual revenues of $240 billion.
Benefits to Cellphone manufacturers
4 billion new cellphones @ 10% upgrade or replacement required every year means 400 million new cellphones required every year. @ Rs. 1,000/$20 per cellphone, this will result into $8 billion revenues.
Benefits to World Economy
4 billion new cellphones @ Rs. 500/$10 per month increase in economic activity will result into world GDP increasing by $480 billion.

If you have old mobile, used cell phone, discarded cellphones that you are not using, please donate them to us for this project. If you want to donate new phones for this project, please make a donation of $10 or Rs. 500 per phone you want to donate. Contact us at sploonker@gmail.com

Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 16-18, 2012

2011-10-18T22:02:00.000+05:30

NESsT has been selected to host the Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, October 16-18, 2012. The SEWF is the premiere global event focused exclusively on social enterprise and on building global awareness of the effectiveness of social enterprise in solving critical social problems. The SEWF 2012 will attract over 1000 global and Brazilian participants from social enterprises, foundations and trusts, private investment firms, as well as business and government leaders.

The annual SEWF was established in 2008 by an international steering group comprised of leading social enterprise support organizations from around the world. The primary purpose of SEWF is to assemble social enterprise leaders and champions from all continents to collaborate, share best practices, and to catalyze the social enterprise movement in the host country. The inaugural SEWF was held in 2008 in Edinburgh, Scotland, and has since traveled to Melbourne, Australia (2009), San Francisco, California (2009), and Johannesburg, South Africa (2010).

The SEWF 2012 will focus on the theme of "Social Enterprise: Investing for Impact" with an emphasis impact investing. Impact investing is an asset class on the rise globally. Investors are increasingly seeking opportunities to place their capital in businesses "that can harness the positive power of enterprise," generating both positive financial returns and social benefits for the community. The SEWF2012 will emphasize strategies for attracting new investment capital for social enterprise from private and public sources, particularly in emerging market countries. The SEWF 2012 will explore global efforts to develop a social capital market to support social enterprises at their various stages of development and with varied sources and types of financing from grants, loans, equity, social bonds, and the emerging social stock exchange.

"The SEWF corresponds with the 15^th anniversary of NESsT's founding in 1997 and is a tremendous opportunity to raise the profile of social enterprise and impact investing in Brazil as well as across Latin America," says NESsT co-Founder & CEO, Nicole Etchart.

NESsT has selected a social enterprise venue to host the SEWF 2012. The Centro Cultural Ação da Cidadania is operated by Ação da Cidadania, a leading Brazilian community organization dedicated to overcoming hunger and poverty. The Centro is located in Rio's waterfront port area, designated for redevelopment in anticipation of the World Cup and Olympics in 2014 and 2016, respectively.

Additional highlights of the SEWF 2012 in Rio will include:

keynote addresses from high-profile public officials, private investors and social enterprise pioneers from Brazil and around the world
10 tracks including engaging panels and workshops with speakers and panelists from leading social enterprises and investors
Social Enterprise Marketplace and exhibition for social enterprises and service providers in Brazil and globally to display their products and services
Investor Day to introduce private and public investors to social enterprise and impact investing
Social Enterpise Awards Gala recognizing excellence in social enterprise
Social Enterprise "Pitching" Place: for social enterprises to present their business plans to experts & investors for advice & feedback
Social Enterprise Workshops: ongoing "how-to" skills-building workshops
Social enterprise site visits and study tour in/around Rio and to Bahia to showcase unique social enterprise models in Brazil
World Café space to network with colleagues, investors, and new friends
Live entertainment, cultural activities and exhibits highlighting the cultural vibrancy of Brazil.

Online registration for the SEWF 2012 will open on November 15^th at www.sewf2012.org. For information on SEWF2012, contact us at sewf@nesst.org.

Applications open for iDiya: ISB's National Social Venture Competition

2011-08-15T03:16:00.000+05:30

The applications for iDiya: ISB's National Social Venture Competition are open!

Register Teams on http://www.isb.edu/idiya/Registration.aspx

Application format on http://www.isb.edu/idiya/Templates.aspx

When you have a business idea

what’s the best you can do with it?

Mobile: 077998 89270

E-mail: iDiya@isb.edu

Website: www.isb.edu/idiya

www.facebook.com/ISBiDiya

twitter.com/ISBiDiya

isbidiya.wordpress.com

Business ideas make money when you execute them well. Here is your chance to make money at the onset of believing in the idea itself. It is my pleasure to introduce iDiya – Indian School of Business’ (ISB) Social Ventures Ideas Competition.

The 3rd iDiya Challenge is awaiting for you to submit a winning Social Entrepreneurship idea and claim the coveted cash prize of Rs. 3 lakhs.

What’s more?

Besides giving you a platform to showcase your idea, participating will also help you identify possible avenues for ensuring your vision takes shape. Other benefits of participating include:

•         A one week ‘boot-camp’ for the top ten teams where you will meet industry leaders, VCs and mentors
•         Winners will receive at least 10-weeks mentoring support after the competition. The mentoring board comprises of high-profile businessmen and organisations who will help you commercialise your idea
•         Top 20 ideas will be showcased on the ISB iDiya website

Who can participate?

iDiya is open to working professionals and early stage NGOs. It is focussed on ventures creating powerful social impact in India. Our aim is to stimulate, develop and facilitate high-impact, self-sustaining and scalable social enterprises in India.

Important Dates

• Registration and submission deadline: September 1, 2011
• Declaration of winners: November 5, 2011

• Boot-camp at ISB: December 2-7, 2011

India's premier Business Plan Competition for Social Entrepreneurs is here !!!

2011-08-07T02:50:00.000+05:30

India's premier Business Plan Competition

for Social Entrepreneurs is here!

Wantrapreneur 2011 - India's largest Social Business Plan Competition invites applications from start-up and early growth enterprises with market based solutions. Enterprises with a focus in agriculture stand a chance to win special rewards.

Be the Change.

Last date for application Sep. 30, 2011

Cash Prizes up to

10 Lakhs | Media Exposure | An opportunity to pitch your idea to Investors | 1 on 1 Mentoring

Online Media Partner	Technology Sponsor	Event Partner	Outreach Partner

Villgro Innovations Foundation
III Floor, IIT Madras Research Park Building, Kanagam Road, Taramani, (Behind TIDEL Park), Chennai – 600 113
Mob: +91-8144308874 E: pragya@villgro.org

NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours 2012

2011-08-06T23:00:00.000+05:30

Spark your innovation with NASSCOM Foundation’s 4th edition of the NASSCOM Social Innovation Honours

NASSCOM Foundation, in association with Genpact opens entries for India’s most impactful social enterprise projects, using technology to solve India’s social and environmental issues.

The awards aim to showcase projects that demonstrate best practices in using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for social transformation. Entries for the countrywide competition are now open, and with some phenomenal projects having been showcased over the past years, NASSCOM Foundation is expecting to identify path breaking projects to be a part of this awards cycle.

If you think your ‘innovative project’ stands a chance to get this award, this is the time to prove it. Applications are invited from ICT led social innovation projects in the following categories:

Not-for-profit organization
For-profit organization as a business model
For- profit organization through corporate social responsibility
Government body
Individual/Group
Student concept
Multi-stakeholder partnership

Eligibility criteria for applying for the Honors:

Organizations/ Departments of Government / Individuals/ Students applying for the NASSCOM
Social Innovation Honours should satisfy the following basic criteria:
They should be registered Indian entities, or foreign entities with a registered presence in India. The innovation must benefit India, or a community in India
The organization should be in existence in India for a minimum of one year
The Project / Initiative should have been in existence at least for one year
Students can apply as a concept or an idea
More details on eligibility criteria are mentioned on the website.

HOW TO APPLY:

The application form can be filled online on the Honours website: www.nsih.in

LAST DATE to receive the filled application form is September 1st, 2011.

For further queries, write to Sneha Barve on sneha@nasscomfoundation.org or call on 022 28328518/19

Social Entrepreneurship Programme by Hand in Hand

2011-06-11T03:19:00.000+05:30

An international social entrepreneurship programme will be launched by the NGO Hand in Hand and a leading Harvard business school professor in August 2011 in Chennai, India. Executives, policy makers, donors, micro finance leaders from NGOs and other related sectoral streams from across the world will take part in the programme. For further details, please log on to www.handinhandsep.org or send an email to priyanka.jayashankar@hihseed.org

India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011

2011-04-28T14:55:00.000+05:30

The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, in collaboration with the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, is inviting applications for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011. The Award aims to identify and celebrate visionary social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated large-scale, systems-change models and are at the stage of scaling/replicating their ideas across India and in other countries.

The deadline for receiving applications is May 30, 2011.

Following an intensive search and selection process including expert reviews and site visits, three to four leading social entrepreneurs will be selected as finalists for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The winner(s) will be announced in a ceremony coinciding with the India Economic Summit in November 2011 in New Delhi.

The Award benefits for the winner(s) include eligibility to participate in the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which provides winners with unprecedented opportunities to engage with global decision makers from the public, corporate, media and academic sectors. The finalists will be invited to the India Economic Summit from 13-15 November 2011 in New Delhi.

Please circulate this invite to your network of successful social entrepreneurs and change makers. Please send nominations of social entrepreneurs who meet the Awards criteria. The links provided below detail the criteria, the selection process, the benefits and other relevant information on the Award. Please visit http://www.schwabfoundseoy.org/en/account/login or http://www.jubilantbhartiafoundation.com/recognising-social-entrepreneurs.html.

Start Up!, an angel investor, incubator and advisor to social entrepreneurs, will be managing the outreach and due-diligence of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2011 on behalf of the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation.

We will be happy to respond to your queries via mail. Please feel free to connect with us at seyawards@startup-india.org or jbf_sey@jubl.com

On behalf of The Start Up! team

Where is Poverty in India?

2011-04-10T12:37:00.000+05:30

In the last few months, there has been an ongoing debate across India to figure out who is poor, where are these poor, how many poor people are in India, so on and so forth. Everyone has joined this band wagon and have been trying to suggest a different way of measuring it and trying to push the numbers as much as possible. We have a wide range of poverty figures varying from 26% to 80% of population. Well, the good news is that our population growth has slowed down substantially. So at least our poverty numbers won’t increase any more.

It is in everyone’s interest to prove that India is very poor and a large part of our population goes hungry and without housing or water. If we are not so poor, how will we ask for aid from World Bank or ADB or IFC or USA and UK. If we are doing fine, how will NGOs demand higher and higher funding from foreign donors and foundations/agencies. How will our politicians justify allocating huge funds to social sector and developmental work and schemes like MGNREGA etc where the politicians and abureaucrats, clerks, govt officials, contractors and others get to siphon off thousands of crores of rupees into their own pockets.

Let us look at some facts. There are 60 crore active mobile phone numbers in India. And another 24 crore new people sign up for mobile phone numbers every year. So at least 50% of Indian population has phone and in next three years, 100% of Indians will have a mobile phone. How can a household that has a mobile phone, be poor? So, at least 50% of India is not poor. We have 9.4 crores vehicles in India and another 1.5 crore vehicles (cars, trucks, buses, 3 wheelers, 2 wheelers) are being sold in India every year. This does not include about 20 lakh vehicles that are exported from India every year. Now, each vehicle owner or the driver of that vehicle cannot be poor, right? We have 24.2 crore households in India. So again by vehicle statistics also, at least 50% of India is not poor. Out of these 24.2 crore households, 3.1 crore are DTH and 10.9 crore are C&S based TV households. Only 41.32% of 10 crore households do not own a TV. But this is changing fast @ of 1.3 crore new households getting TV every year. So the skeptics who proclaim and shout that more than 50% of India, are completely wrong. Above is a testimony to the fact that poverty in India cannot be more than 40% on the highest end.

I have been touring across India for last few years. I have visited villages of less than 50 people and those with 500 households. I have visited rural Bihar, Uttarakhand, HP, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa and other places. Everywhere I go, I try to meet local people and visit their houses. I notice that they have a bulb or a tube light or both. They have bed and cotton mattress or cooking gas cylinder and appliances like mixer, television, refrigerator and so on. Then I wonder even if they received those things in-kind from their employer or picked up from side of roard, to run or use these consumer items, one would need to pay and if they can afford to pay for gas or electricity or water, are they really poor?

In Aug 2010,, the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) estimated in its report, "How India Earns, Spends and Saves", that for the first time ever, the number of high-income households in India has exceeded the number of low-income. In 2010, there were 4.67 crore high-income (earning more than Rs 1.8 lakh per annum) households, there were 14.07 crore middle-income (earning between Rs 45,000 and Rs 1.8 lakh per annum) households, and 4.1 crore households counted as low-incomes (earning less than Rs. 45,000 per annum). NCAER, in the report also estimated the number of families having income between Rs 2 lakh and Rs 10 lakh per annum, which is close to the World Bank definition of middle class, at 28.4 million in 2009-10.

What I am debating is that absolute poverty is almost non-existent in India. May be at 5%. You will say 5% of India is 6 crores. Yes, it is but whatever we do, nature won’t let us lower our absolute poverty levels below 5%. Our only option to reduce absolute poverty numbers is to reduce population.

Relative poverty exists in India. But how much? I doubt if it is more than another 10% on top of the 5% absolute poverty. I am poor than my boss who is poor than Vijay Mallya who is poor than Anil Aggarwal who is poor than Bill Gates and my employee is poor than me and his maid is poor than him. But all of these people are not the relative poor we want to help or bring out of poverty. We are talking of people whom you look at or talk to or whose house you visit and you don’t have to use any parameter or get into a debate in any way as to whether they are poor or not. Those people for whom no one will question that they are poor, irrespective of what parameter or methodology you use.

Take a sample of 1,000 people in every metro, sub-metro, city, town and village and then do a subjective market research and analysis of this sort and you will realize that overall poverty levels in India are no more than 15% i.e. 18 crore Indians. Yes, it is still a very large number of poor people but what we need to pat our backs for, is that we brought out most of India from poverty in last couple decades and trickle down affect did work. Now, we have to set our sights on helping these 18 crore Indian to come out of poverty and bring down our poverty levels to around 8% by 2020, below which we will never get, as that’s what law of nature is.

Surya Prakash Loonker is COO of Catalyst – Social Development Consultants Pvt Ltd and lives in New Delhi. For further articles, please see his blog http://developyourindia.blogspot.com and for more details, please visit www.catalystindia.net or write to him at csdc@catalystindia.net

Are NGOs required in India?

2010-07-08T17:38:00.000+05:30

Lately, I wonder as to why NGOs exist? Are non-profits required? Is the govt not sufficient? Do we need NGOs in traditional sense or more as catalysts / facilitators? You might wonder why am I saying this.

I have been in the social and development sector for last 2 decades. Every few years, I analyse the work I am doing and the sector itself and ask myself if my direction and strategy will lead to a developed India by 2025. My recent analysis, led to the above questions.

Today, Indian govt both at central and state level has welfare schemes for everything. Children, women, health, environment, wildlife, education, livelihoods, social security, electricity, road, school, water, sanitation, ..., you name it and there is a Scheme run by Govt of India. GoI has even launched a website so that you can find a scheme relevant to you.

Now, there are schemes and the resources behind them. Both are unlimited and mostly unutilised. Still NGO sector in India scrambles to raise funds to do the welfare of the poor Indians. Why cannot NGOs act as catalyst or facilitator and bridge the gap between people and govt schemes? Can't they empower people to ask for their own rights and teach them how to access their rights? Isn't it far cheaper to be a catalyst, then to run these schemes themselves. It can easily be done at 1/10th the cost of running an actual scheme. So why raise lakhs and crores of Rupees when you can do it for few thousands or lakhs of rupees. Also, NGO resources are always limited but govt resources are practically unlimited. Is it not better to teach people to tap these unlimited resources than go after limited donations to do welfare yourself?

It leads to the age old conundrum. If i do it myself, i get the name, credit, fame. If i show the way, I will hardly even get recognition. So is it that NGOs in India want to survive for generations and so unable to do the right thing. As soon as I put this question before NGOs, I know what the response will be. We are different, we are unique, we provide quality, there is corruption in govt, we cannot work with govt, govt is inefficient, govt cannot do it the way we can do it, govt does not provide what i provide and so on. I wonder if we can put our differences aside and get united to help the poor instead of funding our own survival.

India Social Entrepreneur Award of the Year - 2010

2010-06-26T14:35:00.000+05:30

The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, in collaboration with The Hindustan Times and Mint, are inviting applications for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010. The Award aims to identify and celebrate visionary social entrepreneurs who have demonstrated large-scale, systems-change models and are at the stage of scaling/replication their ideas across India and in other countries.

The deadline for receiving applications is July 1, 2010.

Following an intensive search and selection process including expert reviews and site visits, four to five leading social entrepreneurs will be selected for the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award. The winner(s) will be announced in a ceremony coinciding with the India Economic Summit in November 2010.

The Award benefits for the winner(s) will include participation in the Regional Meetings of the World Economic Forum, inclusion in the Schwab Foundation network of leading social entrepreneurs, possible nomination to the Forum of Young Global Leaders and the Global Agenda Council, and eligibility to participate in the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos.

We request you to circulate this mail widely to your networks of social changemakers. The attached document details the criteria and other relevant information on the Awards. If you wish to apply, please visit http://www.schwabfoundseoy.org/india.

Start Up!, an incubator and advisor to social entrepreneurs,- will be managing the outreach and due-diligence of the India Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award 2010 on behalf of the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation. We will be happy to respond to your queries via mail. Please feel free to connect with us at seyawards@startup-india.org or jbf_sey@jubl.com.

Social Entrepreneurs in the making

2010-06-08T00:52:00.001+05:30

Check out these interesting men and women and their meaningful "next" lives

Rahul Verghese (Ex Motorola, gave up his high powered marketing job and started runningandliving.com)

"I started enjoying the tremendous psychological, health, and other benefits of running only after the age of 40. My mission is to help every man woman and child, unleash their personal potential by rekindling their joy of running. It's amazing what such a simple thing can do for you. It's no wonder that running is the most participative and fastest growing 'sport' in the world. Our goal is to get 200 million people to take up running"

http://runningandliving.com/

Abodh Aras, (Abodh was formerly with the customer services and sales department of DHL Worldwide Express) now works with Stray dogs!

Chief Executive Officer, W.S.D (Welfare of Stray dogs), Mumbai
http://www.wsdindia.org/

Manish & Arti Jain, Founders, Friendsofbooks.com (Manish is a Software Architect who built software in the US for several years, before returning to India. He is an IIT Roorkee and Texas Tech University alumni, who loves to read as much as he loves to code. www.friendsofbooks.com is his labor of love.Arti has a BA in English from Delhi University, an MA in Mass Communication from Jamia and an MFA in Cinema from San Francisco State University. Arti is an independent media professional in her "other" life.). They started up an online library from where books can be rented.

http://www.friendsofbooks.com/about.htm

Where are the philanthropists who can fund real Scaling Up

2010-05-07T15:06:00.000+05:30

Last two decades have been decades of scaling up businesses all across the globe. The social sector across the world began to realise the need to scale up in the last decade or so. In India, social sector scaling up is still at very nascent stage. We did see some examples recently - CRY, Give India, CAF India, Concern India, Srijan, Prison Ministry India, HRLN and a few others. But real scaling up is yet to be seen in India.

We have new age NGOs from India and the world over who are trying to scale-up nationally or globally. The challenge is immense and the biggest challenge is finance required to scale up. Each of these NGOs are operating in business-like manner, working on financial sustainability from the beginning, using volunteer or in-kind mechanisms to reduce the costs, clocking a growth rate of 100% to 1000% every year making software industry look like a dwarf.

Isha Foundation's Project Green Hands have reached a scale of planting 4 million trees a year in a short span of 5 years and they will double this every year till 2020. Their target is to plant 114 million trees in Tamil Nadu in a short span of 15 years taking its green cover to mandated 33% of the available land area. Expected cost $1.2/tree, a total of $140 million. They are ready to scale up across India where they will require to plant 3.42 billion trees across India taking India's green cover to 33% and it will cost them $4 billion.

Ahmedabad, Gujarat based Mahiti Adhikar Gujarath Pahel currently has 1 mobile RTI van. It is ready to scale up across Gujarat in 1st phase with 1 mobile RTI van per district and finally across India where it will need a total of 625 mobile vans and it will expand its services from RTI to include all central and state govt schemes. The funds required is $45 million, $60,000 per district per year.

John Wood's Room To Read has plans to reach 20 million children by 2020 and is on track to achieve that. But if I would ask John whether he will be willing to reach 1 billion children by 2025, he will say yes too. Problem is the staggering $250 billion required to achieve that. His cost per child is quite higher at $275 per child per year. But am sure, he will reduce it by half once he achieves the economies of scale as soon as he crosses the 10 million children mark by 2015. That's a straight away reduction of $125 billion.

When we have minds and business acumen like John's in the social sector today, what we are lacking is the serious philanthropic capital commitment of the likes of Warren Buffett and William Gates II. We need every individual on Forbes 100 Richest People in the World list to seriously look at their wealth and their commitment to the world. Can they open up their purse strings to funds these social sector scale ups? Similarly, Boards of Fortune 500 list of companies need to have a serious board meeting asking themselves if they are really fulfilling their commitment to their stakeholders by hoarding away billions of dollar of profits in banks.

I hope Carlos Slim, Mukesh Ambani, L N Mittal et al are listening. I request Exxon Mobil, Wal Mart, ING, Toyota are to think.

Surya Prakash Loonker
sploonker@gmail.com

Social Audit should be mandatory and compulsory in all govt schemes, ministries and govt departments

2010-04-21T19:47:00.000+05:30

What is a Social Audit ?

A social audit is a process in which the people work with the government to monitor and evaluate the planning and implementation of a scheme or programme, or indeed of a policy or law. The social audit process is critically dependent on the demystification and wide dissemination of all relevant information.
Social audit - conducted jointly by the government and the people, especially by those people who are affected by, or are the intended beneficiaries of, the scheme being audited.
- Can bring on board the perceptions and knowledge of the people,
- Can look at outcomes and not just outputs,
- Can involve the people in the task of verification,
- Also, much greater acceptability by the government.

The Scope of a Social Audit

A social audit is conducted over the life span of a scheme or programme, and not just in one go or at one stage.
It audits the process, the outputs and the outcome.
It audits planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

Elements of a Social Audit

Raising awareness of rights, entitlements and obligations under a scheme.
Specifically, about the right to participate in a social audit.
Ensuring that all forms and documents are user friendly.
Ensuring all relevant information is accessible, displayed and read out.
Ensuring that the decision making process is transparent, participatory and, as far as possible, carried out in the presence of the affected persons.
Ensuring that all decisions, and their rationale, are made public as soon as they are made.
Ensuring that measurements, certification and inspection involves the affected people on a random and rotational basis.
Ensuring that there are regular (six monthly) public hearings (jan audit manch) where the scheme and the process of social auditing is publicly analysed.
Ensuring that the findings of social audits are immediately acted upon.
Also ensuring that these findings result in the required systemic changes.

Benefits of Social Audit

Reduction of corruption.
Increased effectiveness of a program or project or scheme.
Benefits reach the people.
Government becomes more responsible and accountable.
Power in hands of the public.

I, Surya Prakash Loonker, am proposing that Social Audit should be mandatory and compulsory in all govt schemes, ministries and govt departments. Just like RTI, Social Audit can be a powerful tool in hands of the people. Social Audit is the next step after RTI. RTI gets you information. Social Audit actually helps get results or solve problems. Please campaign to make Social Audit an Act through legislation.

Villgro in association with the Rockefeller Foundation, presents the Villgro Fellowship

2010-04-07T13:03:00.000+05:30

Villgro in association with the Rockefeller Foundation, presents the Villgro Fellowship, a 10- month program designed to equip individuals who dare to follow their dreams and to help build a prosperous rural India.

The Villgro Fellowship offers an exciting opportunity to work for 10 months both independently and alongside Villgro professionals. Since the launch of the Villgro Fellowship in 2009, 7 fellows with varied professional backgrounds and experiences from around the globe, having worked in France, Brazil, the United States, Bangladesh and India have joined the program. During the program, Villgro Fellows contribute to rural prosperity by:

* Mentoring a social enterprise with innovative products or service models, serving the rural markets, by providing their expertise in strategizing, process design and implementation, marketing & business development to name a few, and thus enabling a large scale rural impact;

* Deploying practical, imaginative and decisive leadership in working with innovators, innovations, social entrepreneurs and rural markets;

* Acquiring in-depth understanding of the innovation and social enterprise sectors;

* Developing specific expertise in process management, product development and business planning & strategy;

* Implementing the best (international) practices from industry.
Rural India needs ideas that can deliver inclusive, eco-friendly and sustainable prosperity. A handful of individuals – better known as social entrepreneurs – are making that difference by blurring the boundaries between business and social good. These individuals stand out for their vision, purposefulness , passion , leadership , innovativeness, risk taking ability, and persistence.

If you are one such path-breaker in the making, you need to have a space to hone those instincts, a live laboratory that will help you sharpen your abilities. Above all, you need an opportunity to prepare yourself to launch your dream venture

Fellowship Location , Compensation and Travel

Villgro is pleased to provide you a stipend of Rs. 25,000/- per month to cover meals, housing and incidental costs.

The fellows may be required to travel to or stay at the location of the innovators they are working with. All travel and stay will be in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu and some states in the north.

Compensation for the fellows program is designed to cover the costs associated with the program, i.e., local travel to and from the office, accommodation, local transportation for business needs, food, health insurance and incidentals.

Villgro will reimburse the to and fro transportation of the shortest route for all to Chennai from their place of domicile. In addition, travel expenses to the innovator location, for quarterly meetings and any other Villgro meetings during the fellowship will be borne by Villgro

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

1. How many fellows will be selected for the program this year?

We are launching a second round of fellowships this year and as such will be accepting 5 fellows. In addition to the fellowship, Villgro also recruits volunteers, interns and other professionals for various projects.

2. What is the nature of support that will be offered for Villgro fellows to settle down at the place of work if they are from elsewhere?

Villgro will provide you with accommodations for the first 10 days of your stay in Chennai. During that time, the administrative staff will help you to identify suitable housing for the rest of your stay. Accommodations for work-related travel are organized by the administrative staff.

3. Can Villgro fellows bring their immediate family along with them?

The fellowship program will arrange for travel, work permits and other items only for the fellow. While Villgro acknowledges and respects the needs of fellows to bring their immediate family, they will need to do so at their own expense. It should be noted that fellows may be expected to travel at short notice and according to the schedule of the incubation plan, and that the program is intensive, time-consuming and requires real commitment and flexibility. Fellows should consider these factors carefully before deciding to bring family members.

4. Are Villgro fellows allowed to take leaves of absence during the program?

Villgro fellows are encouraged to take leaves of absence only for reasons of sickness or physical inability to travel to work. Leave requests for exceptional reasons will be considered on a case by case basis.

5. What type of mentoring and support will Villgro fellows receive during the program?

Each fellow is assigned a formal mentor from within Villgro to whom they are encouraged to discuss the progress of their project or any other matters they need support on. This mentor would not be the person he/she is reporting to. Apart from this, Villgro has a very positive and supportive work culture and you are free to seek informal mentoring and support of any Villgro employee you choose.

6. Can fellows expect an offer of employment from Villgro or its partner organizations on completion of the program?

Villgro reserves the right to extend employment to fellows. Upon completion of the program, if such an offer is not made, Villgro can help to recommend opportunities at other organizations based on Villgro's assessment of the fellow's performance and potential.

How to Apply

Send in your detailed resume, along with a one page summary (not exceeding 500 words) of why you are interested in applying for the fellowship and which project you are interested in, to fellowship@villgro.org before 20th April 2010

Shortlisted candidates can expect a phone call from us at a mutually convenient time informing them of the same.

Finalists would participate in an in-person /teleconference /video conference interview with an eminent social entrepreneur and senior staff from the Villgro selection board.

The decision on the persons selected for the Villgro fellowship and extension of offers to successful candidates will be announced on 3RD May 2010

Apply now to participate in an exciting journey with us!
http://www.villgro.org/

LAUNCHING THE ISB iDiya CHALLENGE FOR WORKING PROFESSIONALS!

2009-10-06T14:02:00.000+05:30

The Situation:

49% of the world’s underweight children; 46% of the world’s wasted children and 34% of the world’s stunted children live… in INDIA. Read more. <http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/13/world/asia/13malnutrition.html?_r=2>
456 million people below the international poverty line ($1.25/ day)… live in INDIA. That is one and a half times the population of the USA and one-third of the world’s population below the poverty line. Read more. <http://www.worldbank.org.in/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/COUNTRIES/SOUTHASIAEXT/INDIAEXTN/0,,contentMDK:21880725~pagePK:141137~piPK:141127~theSitePK:295584,00.html>
70% of the population does not have access to basic banking and financial services… in Rural INDIA. Read more. <http://www.urbanindia.nic.in/moud/theministry/subordinateoff/tcpo/REPORTON_BANKINGSERVICES/CHAPTER-1.pdf>
41% of the population does not own any of the basic products/assets – bicycle; radio; telephone… in Rural INDIA. Read more. <http://www.urbanindia.nic.in/moud/theministry/subordinateoff/tcpo/REPORTON_BANKINGSERVICES/CHAPTER-1.pdf>
Who will do something about this? Watch this. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A0M0EZ8T5J8&feature=related> And this. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waS5FNFmxrk&feature=related>

The Response:

Some individuals have taken the untrodden path and have chosen to create companies which do good and also do business.
DesiCrew - http://www.desicrew.in/. Rural BPO delivering 40% cost savings to its clients while changing lives of rural populations. 80% of its team are women.
Dial 1298 for Ambulance - http://www.1298.in/. Rolling out a nationwide network of life support ambulance service.
Inclusive Planet - http://www.inclusiveplanet.com. Building the world’s largest community of differently-abled persons.

Your opportunity to make your mark:

ISB iDiya Challenge is a National Social Ideas Competition being organised by the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad
It is open to all working professionals
Closing date for submission is October 25, 2009
Mentoring partners for ISB iDiya: Acumen Fund, Deloitte, DFJ, Google, Intellecap, Seedfund, Unitus, Venture East.
Register now! www.isb.edu/idiya <http://www.isb.edu/idiya> . Email: idiya@isb.edu.
ISB iDiya Networking Platform: http://isbidiya.ning.com/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Hyderabad-India/ISB-iDiya/127648572855
Just in! ISB iDiya in the news: Deccan Chronicle <http://www.deccanchronicle.com/tabloids/b-schoolers-invest-power-ideas-490> , The Hindu <http://www.hindu.com/2009/09/09/stories/2009090957780200.htm>

Request: Please forward this mail to all your friends and colleagues who might get motivated to get involved in social change.

Social Enterprises started by NGOs in India

2009-09-27T19:12:00.002+05:30

Sustaintech - profit-making sister company of TIDE India
Samuchit Enviro Tech Pvt Ltd - Commercial arm of ARTI
Sakhi Retail P Ltd - Commercial arm of SPS
Kumaun Grameen Udyog - a Section 25 company promoted by CHIRAG
Safe Harvest - a company setup to promote and market safe foods and in particular foods with no pesticides used in their cultivation. These products have been produced by small and marginal farmers in rain-fed areas of rural India. Commerical arm of 7 NGOs.

How to do waste management

2009-05-04T01:01:00.000+05:30

FORAY | Sunday, March 29, 2009

The best way to reduce your rubbish is to have a look in your bin to see what you are throwing away. Here are some useful tips to reduce waste:

* You could reduce the amount of rubbish in your bin by up to a third by composing your tea bags, coffee grounds, vegetable waste, fruit peelings and garden waste.
* Think before you buy. Try not to buy items that are heavily packaged, opt for the items with less packaging, buy in bulk, or buy refills instead.
* Take appropriate old unwanted items to your local charity shop, someone else could make good use of it. If you have furniture or other household items that are in good condition and may be used by someone else, give them away.
* Say no to plastic shopping bags when you do your weekly shop, use a bag for life or a reusable cloth one instead. Bring your own bags when you shop and try to buy in bulk as often as possible.
* Support your local milkman and have your milk delivered — the average milk bottle can be re-used up to 20 times before being recycled.
* Try not to buy appliances that are run on batteries, choose the solar powered option wherever possible, or try using rechargeable batteries instead. Don’t buy disposable batteries, buy a charger and rechargeable batteries as they are much cheaper. It takes 50 times the energy contained within batteries to make them.
* Use low energy long-life light bulbs to save money, electricity and waste.
* Use cloth hankies and flannels instead of the throw away version.
* Use both sides of paper before recycling it. Re-use envelopes and wrapping paper where possible.
* Buy recycled goods such as writing paper, toilet roll, dustbin bags, or buy second hand products.
* Re-use your glass jars for storing small items like nails and bolts, old yoghurt pots make an excellent alternative to plant pots for seedlings. Storage containers can be re-used for storing leftover food instead of clingfilm and foil.
* Hire or borrow tools from friends or family for odd jobs, rather than buying your own.
* Magazine subscription: Think if you really need them? Save yourself a few rupees and buy them only when you need them, or agree with friends to swap magazines when you've read them. Don't forget to recycle them once you've read them.
* Re-use envelopes and wrapping paper where possible.
* Buy recycled goods such as writing paper, toilet roll, dustbin bags, or buy second hand products.
* Washing detergents — buy with combined conditioner. It saves packaging and money.
* Buy fruits and vegetables loose from a local market or grocer rather than highly-packaged goods from supermarkets. It saves packaging.

http://www.dailypioneer.com/165715/How-to-do-waste-management.html

An Introductory Workshop For Entrepreneurial Non Profits

2009-05-03T19:13:00.000+05:30

An Introductory Workshop For Entrepreneurial Non Profits

Venue: Accountability House, A-5, Sector 26, Noida

June 5-6,2009

Organised by:

Centre for Training and Research in Responsible Business & Social Entrepreneurship

Knowledge Partner:

Centre for Social Initiatives & Management, Hyderabad

Part Sponsor: SEHGAL FOUNDATION

A clear message which has emerged from the recent Davos meet is that Business and Governments have lost peoples’ Trust worldwide. On the other hand peoples’ Trust in civil society organizations has increased with communities around the world expressing their faith in the ability of not for profit and for profit civil society organizations to provide solutions to the problems of the common man.

The global financial meltdown and the steep fall in peoples’ trust in big business has opened the doors for Social Entrepreneurs. Social Enterprise, which aims at earning a profit along with achieving maximum social value, it is now being felt, is the answer for the growing retrenchment and increasing unemployment.

Social Entrepreneurs are seen as agencies whose mission orientation and strategic intervention through innovative programmes have helped in addressing issues of poverty and social discrimination. They provide the jobs, skills, and services that are needed to hold the economy and communities together in times of crisis.

A number of Social Entrepreneurs in India have proved through actions their capability to bring about the needed change. NGOs are finding it increasingly difficult to finance their on going projects because of lack of adequate finances. Many NGOs are looking for ways and means to generate internal revenues to finance the projects and gain sustainability. The move towards becoming Social Entrepreneurs is gaining strength.

The two day workshop will introduce the concept of social entrepreneurship, provide an insight into the working of social entrepreneurs to address organisational and resource challenges. It will attempt to orient socially conscious individuals and civil society organisations to the opportunities and needs in the social sector and social entrepreneurship as a means to make social work practice sustainable and effective.

Description

This workshop is an attempt to explain the important breakthroughs in social entrepreneurship. Participants learn what social entrepreneurship is, and how to develop and implement customized plans for social entrepreneurship. This Workshop will cover:

1. An overall framework for understanding social entrepreneurship

2. Benefits of being more entrepreneurial

3. Why private, government and business funders should support social entrepreneurship

4. Major social entrepreneurship strategies and important considerations (product and service sales, free-standing businesses, partnership with corporations)

Special features of this training include:

1. Focused on nuts-and-bolts activities of planning social entrepreneurship activities for your organization

2. Instruction from experts on social entrepreneurship

3. Comprehensive, well-organized and substantive training materials

4. Case Studies of Successful Social Enterprises

Who Should Attend:

This is a workshop for Social Entrepreneurs and not for profit organizations aspiring to generate internal revenues to sustain their social projects Employees responsible for Corporate Responsibility in Corporate house will benefit by learning about the operations of social enterprises and how business can support such ventures to win community goodwill. The workshop will provide students an opportunity to learn how to create social enterprises as a career option.

Sessions

Introducing the Workshop

Understanding Social Entrepreneurship

Speaker: Prof K.L.Shrivastava, Centre for Social Initiatives & Management

Need for Not for Profits to take up Social Enterprises

Speaker: Anshu Gupta, Goonj

Business Development Strategy For Entrepreneurial Non Profits

Positioning & Marketing Strategies for Entrepreneurial Non Profits

Speaker: Suresh Kr Pramar

Leveraging Corporate CSR to promote Social Entrepreneurship

Speaker: Vikas Goswami, Lead CSR Microsoft

Leveraging Government support to promote Social Entrepreneurship

Case Studies: Prof K L Shrivastava

Site Visit: Goonj

Speakers:

Prof K.L.Shrivastava, CSIM, Hyderabad, has been involved in training Social Entrepreneurs for the past almost a decade. Many of his past pupils are successful social entrepreneurs

Vikas Goswami, Lead CSR Microsoft, is a CSR expert who has almost two decades of experience in Corporate Responsibility. She is both knowledgeable and an excellent speaker

Anshu Gupta is the Founder Director of Goonj. A grassroot worker Anshu has built Goonj into a very effectivev social organization working for the welfare of the poor and needy.

Suresh Kr Pramar, Executive Director, Centre for Training and Research in Responsible Business, is a journalist by profession.

Acceptance of more Speakers is awaited.

Certificate: Certificate of Participation will be awarded to all participants at the end of the workshop.

Registration Fee: Corporates, Corporate sponsored Foundations, Funding Agencies Rs 5,000, NGOs,Social Entrepreneurs and SMEs Rs 4,000 Students: Graduate students Rs 1,500, Post Graduate and IITs Rs 2,500 Limited seats available. The fee does not include accommodation or conveyance. Registration on typed paper providing the following Name, Age, Organisation, Address, Cell Phone No., Email Id Cheque/DD No. along with fee should be sent to Suresh Kr Pramar, 3A, Nilgiri 3, Sector 34, Noida 201301. Cheques/DD should be made out in the name of CRBiz, Noida. Participants from outside New Delhi/Noida should make payments through Demand Draft.

Phone:9213133042

The Organisers: The Centre for Training & Research in Responsible Business and Social Entrepreneurship are pioneers in organizing workshops on Corporate Social Responsibility. We have so far conducted five well attended workshops on CSR in various parts of the country: New Delhi Oct 2007, Hyderabad January 2008, Chennai April 2008, Bangalore September 2008 and New Delhi December 2008. These workshops have attracted participation from several PSUs, Private Sector units, National and International NGOs and students. The Centre is part of the Global Gandhian Trusteeship and Corporate Responsibility Foundation, a registered Trust.

Knowledge Partner: The Center for Social Initiative & Management (CSIM) is a business school for social work professionals. CSIM helps create a fertile base for socially motivated individuals to discover their innate capabilities, enable them enhance their personality, equip them with management skills to launch their social initiatives. This process enables to transform their vision into action. CSIM has centers at Chennai, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore.

Part Sponsor: The Sehgal Foundation was established to help reduce poverty and improve the quality of life in rural India. Its goal is to empower individuals and communities to take care of themselves, and eventually help them become self-sufficient. In order to be self-reliant, it is essential that development is multidimensional, and to achieve this, the Foundation promotes an Integrated, Sustainable Village Development (ISVD) model.

This Workshop was originally to be held on April 16-17, 2008. It was postponed due to the National Election

Suresh Kr Pramar, Executive Director

3 A, Nilgiri 3, Sector 34, Noida

Cell: 9213133042

Email Suresh.pramar@gmail.com; suresh.responsiblebizz@gmail.com

A Social Solution, Without Going the Nonprofit Route

2009-04-28T19:35:00.000+05:30

Alex Quesada for The New York Times

Conchy Bretos, right, advises housing agencies on how to care for older people in their homes. Her daughter Pilar works with her.

By MARCI ALBOHER, Published: March 4, 2009

It used to be that people who wanted to solve a social problem — like lack of access to clean water or inadequate housing for the poor — created a charity. Today, many start a company instead.

Alex Quesada for The New York Times

Ms. Bretos is formerly Florida’s secretary for aging and adult services.

D.light, a company cofounded by Sam Goldman, who spent four years in the Peace Corps in Benin before earning a master’s degree in business from Stanford University, is an example. Mr. Goldman started D.light with the mission of replacing millions of kerosene lamps now used in poor, rural parts of the world with solar-powered lamps.

Having used kerosene lamps himself while living in Benin, Mr. Goldman learned firsthand of kerosene’s problems — it is expensive, it provides poor light and it is extremely dangerous. When the son of his West African neighbor nearly died after suffering severe burns from spilled kerosene, Mr. Goldman said he realized he wanted to create a venture to solve both the social and economic problems caused by these lamps. His time in Benin also convinced him, he said, that only as a business could a project become large enough to reach the great number of people who use these lamps as their primary source of light.

“We could have done it as a nonprofit over a hundred years, but if we wanted to do it in five or 10 years, then we believed it needed to be fueled by profit,” he said. “That’s the way to grow.”

Since the company incorporated in May 2007, it has raised $6.5 million from a combination of investors who, Mr. Goldman said, are able to push the company on both its social mission and its profitability.

What to call these innovative businesspeople is the subject of some debate. The terms “social entrepreneur” and “social businesses” are generally used to characterize people and businesses that bring entrepreneurship to ventures that have a social mission. Yet there are those who would limit the social entrepreneur label only to those without any profit motive. A separate, but related, category are companies referred to as “socially responsible.” These are generally companies whose core business does not necessarily have a social mission, but who display socially responsible characteristics, like environmental sensitivity.

Because of the difficulty of defining these social ventures, it is hard to gauge the exact number of them, but there are indications that there is increasing interest in the idea of using business to tackle the world’s big problems. Last year, 630 people attended a new conference, Social Capital Markets, on social venture investing. According to Kevin Jones, the creator of the conference and a principal in Good Capital, an investment firm focusing on social business, two-thirds of the participants signed up after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, which he called a sign that people are flocking to what he calls a “new asset class.”

Experts concede that not all social problems respond well to the for-profit model. One example could be early childhood education. “If you set it up as a business, you might be able to raise money more quickly and grow more quickly,” said David Bornstein, the author of “How to Change the World” (Oxford University Press, 2004), an often-cited book on social entrepreneurship. “But if you want to be profitable, you might find that you have to make choices that diminish the quality of your program and then children won’t learn to read as quickly. While Stanley Kaplan can make a fortune selling education to well-heeled people, providing the same services to low-income kids would probably not provide a very good income.”

Mr. Bornstein said it came down to one crucial question: “As you grow, will the economics of your business work in favor of your mission or will they work against it? In the case of providing access to solar energy for people in villages, the bigger you get, the cheaper your product will be, so the economies of scale make sense.”

Conchy Bretos, too, chose a for-profit model for her venture. While working as Florida’s secretary for aging and adult services, Ms. Bretos learned of the difficulties that force older people to leave their homes and move into nursing homes for lack of proper care.

With a partner, Ms. Bretos started the MIA Consulting Group, a business that advises governments as well as private housing developers on how to bring assisted living services cost-effectively to low-income housing communities so that older people can be cared for in their own homes.

Ms. Bretos said that a business was the natural model for their venture. “We came from a strong business background and we developed a business plan,” Ms. Bretos said. “By doing that, we discovered that we were offering something that no one else was offering. We got our first client even before we incorporated and within a few hours we had to form a company to be able to put together a contract. It was just easy to form an S corporation.”

Ms. Bretos said she also had to make a living. “In this nation, we equate success with profit,” she said. “We wanted to be profitable while also doing something that was right and giving back to the community.”

Advisers who work with these kinds of companies say the rise in social business reflects the times. “Historically, social and legal norms tended to recognize and treat for-profit and progressive social or environmental motivations and activities separately,” said Jonathan S. Storper, a partner at the law firm Hanson Bridgett who specializes in sustainable and socially responsible business. “These lines have blurred and converged as the business world attempts to respond to the modern culture’s demand that businesses be good stewards of the environment and society.”

Still, there are legal issues to consider. The basic analysis, Mr. Storper said, is whether the organization’s primary goal is to maximize shareholder profit or to benefit the public. “If the primary goal is to benefit the shareholders, then the legal structure should maximize the ability to create wealth,” he said. “While nonprofits have advantages, such as an exemption from paying taxes and the tax deductibility of donations, nonprofit activities are restricted to its charitable purpose.”

He noted that the government and the public “generally are less able to scrutinize the operations and finances of for-profit businesses.” But, he added, “The mission of an organization may benefit from the broad public involvement and support inherent in nonprofit organizations.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/05/business/smallbusiness/05sbiz.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss&pagewanted=all

Is really everyone getting big salaries in India? Fact or Rumour?

2009-01-21T13:16:00.000+05:30

Income bracket	No of tax payers			TDS collected
(per year in Rs.)	2005-06	2006-07	2007-08	(in Cr in Rs.)

5-10L	X		2X
10L-20L		150,000		5,770
10-50L	87,000		224,000
50L-1Cr	4,400		10,500
1Cr & above	2,200		5,000	4415

As per ITRs filed.

Individual income statistics.

Source: Income tax dept, Govt of India through The Economic Times, Sat, Dec 27, 2008

Third International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship, Dakshinachitra, Chennai, India - 4 & 5 Dec, 2008

2008-10-08T11:11:00.000+05:30

Inviting you to register for the international conference on social entrepreneurship in India: 4th-5th Dec 08 near Chennai, India

We are pleased to invite you to register for UnLtd India's annual conference on social entrepreneurship in India to be held from 4th - 5th Dec 08 at Dakshinachitra near Chennai, India.

The conference is being organised by UnLtd India and Centre for Social Initiative and Management (www.csim.org). It is supported by CSO Partners (www.csopartners.org) and XL Results Foundation (www.resultsfoundation.com)

Building on the success of the events in 2006 and 2007, the conference this year will be buzzing with more energy and ideas for change. The event will attract 250 delegates comprising of social entrepreneurs, non profits, funding organisations, corporates and academic institutions globally.

Attached is the programme that is designed to offer inspiration, expertise, new connections, information and opportunities to you. The speakers include Nachiket Mor, President, ICICI Foundation; Madhav Chavan, Founder, Pratham; Caroline Casey, Founding CEO, Aisling Foundation; Dr. R. D. Ravindra, Chief Medical Officer, Aravind Eye Hospital and Venkat Krishnan, Founding Director, Give India. Please note that the programme will be updated as we receive confirmations from all the invited speakers.

For further details on the event, registration and sponsorship, please visit www.unltdindia.org/conference.html

If you would like to register online directly, please visit www.unltdindia.org/conference2008/registration.html

Please note that the last date for registration is 25th Nov, 2008.

If you have any questions, please write to us at conference@unltdindia.org or call us at +91 22 3216 3287.

We hope you will join us to experience the transformational power of social entrepreneurs and to connect with the changemaker within each one of us.

Pooja Warier
UnLtd India
Tel: +91 98679 49306
Email: pooja.warier@unltdindia.org
Find out more about UnLtd India: http://www.unltdindia.org/
Watch our video: http://www.unltdindia.org/video.html

"Catch them Young!" - develop future philanthropists

2008-09-29T14:19:00.000+05:30

You might have heard of the catch phrase 'catch them young' that marketing gurus use especially for consumer products. How about applying the same to the charity and good values. When i was in school in late 80s, I remember that a major disaster happened in India. In those days, natural disasters in India where almost like once a decade. Our School decided to participate in helping and decided that they should engage children will social phenomena and activities. Those days Re. 1 and so was a big amount. Everyone in school was given these pre-printed receipts by school of Rs. 1, 2, 5, 10 and in school assembly students were asked to go around their neighbourhood and raise funds using these. There was also an exciting part put in it saying that for each class, top 3 fund raisers will be recognised. I can see how this exercise benefited me. To name a few things:
- engaged me with society early on
- taught me the principles of generosity and giving
- helped me open up and be able to talk to complete strangers (people don't bite if you say hello to them)
- there is competition in everything
- hard work and sincerity
- Trust begins by myself putting trust in others, first (school trusted us that we will not pocket the money and that unconsciously forced us not to steal)
- even small amounts help those in dire need
- marketing and sales
- life has things beyond education, games, sports and co-curricular activities
- importance of giving and encouraging others to give
- charity begins at home (I remember selling 1st of my tickets to my parents and next few ones to my next door neighbours who actually family since we shared food on daily basis and practically lived in each others' homes)

With so many natural and man-made disasters happening in India every year now, one can very well use this idea. If this concept is introduced in schools across India, we can help develop future philanthropists. Catch them Young!

Why does Govt give sops to industries that do not matter?

2008-09-17T16:16:00.000+05:30

Everyone has heard about the software boom, BPO boom and Outsourcing boom and how it is helping India. The software companies, BPO, KPO, LPO, Outsourcing advocates, Nasscom Foundation, CII shout from the rooftops that we should continue income tax benefits for this industry as it is good for India's poor. The same CII and FICCI said the same slogans for Exporters in last decade trying to fool us all and continue the income tax benefits to few privileged Exporters saying that export is what is helping India alleviate poverty. Good thing is govt did not listen and poor people won and now exporters have to pay taxes. Its time Govt does not listen to these lobbyists who this time are advocating for software and outsourcing companies. All these companies need to be treated the same way as the rest and no incentives are required for them. Look at some of the facts below:

- For Mar 2007, Software and Outsourcing companies put together exported $32 billion worth of services while the manufacturing and agriculture sector together exported $160 billion worth of goods
- Today, IT (Information technology) and ITES (Information technology enabled services) companies together employ a total of 25,00,000 persons all across India while just the security guard industry in India employees 63,00,000 persons. By 2010, entire IT & ITES industry will employ 29,50,000 persons.
- Entire ITES industry employs, 5,00,000 persons while Reliance Retail alone will employ 5,00,000 persons in next 2 years

India needs to create 60,00,000 jobs a year to be able to keep unemployment below 10%. After 25 year of software and outourcing industry growth, they have only employed 15,00,000, a miniscule 60,000 new jobs every year while we need 100 times more jobs than that to employ our growing adult population.

Software and outsourcing industry is creating jobs for middle and higher middle class while we actually need lots of new jobs for lower middle class and poor people. Security guard industry, retail industry, petrol pumps, food processing, restaurant are the industries which are creating jobs for these people and also in quantities that we need. Should govt not be giving incentives to these industries?

Instead of blocking foreign investors to come into retail sector, if we allow them, we can create millions of new jobs for really poor people. Imagine Walmart, Tesco, Metro if are allowed to setup stores in India, they will employ at least 1,00,00,000 in less than 3 years in their stores and on the manufacturing floors of their suppliers.

Have Govts & Civil Society really failed at reducing poverty in India?

2008-09-01T18:35:00.000+05:30

We keep blaming Govt after Govt, NGO after NGO about not alleviating poverty. Can poverty be really eliminated? Has any country achieved this utopia, even our favourite comparison - USA? If eliminating poverty is an ideal which we should all aim for but we all know is not practical, than reduction of poverty year-on-year is something we should aim for and evaluate our Govt and Civil Society on this parameter - reduction of poverty, rather than poverty alleviation.

A simple direct comparison between INDIA and USA on poverty shows us that after all, we haven't done so badly. We are only 9.61% behind USA in terms of poverty. They have had 233 years to work on it as against 61 years we have had since Independence. A lot remains to be done. We definitely need to bring down poverty to single digit percentage and looks like we should be able to achieve this by 2025, if not 2015. So we should take a moment and pat our Govts and Civil Society for their contribution in making this happen. It is really critical to take real stock of the situation and then move forward.

Comparison criteria	INDIA	USA

Years since Independence	61	233
Total population	1,129,866,154	301,139,947
Poverty line	INR 1,500	$ 5,250
%age poor	22.00%	12.39%
Poor population	248,570,554	37,300,000

Why is current increasing inflation good for India?

2008-05-10T03:47:00.000+05:30

We always think inflation is bad. Increasing inflation is worse. Inflation make things expensive and cost of living goes up. But just like there is good cholestrol and bad cholestrol, there is good inflation and bad inflation. This time around the inflation that has almost doubled in last few months in India is good inflation. Why is that?

This time around, the increasing inflation is mainly due to increasing food prices. I often wondered as to how is it that i used to be able to purchase a loaf of bread for Rs. 8 about 5 years ago and even today while prices of petrol, car and other items keep increasing. Also input item prices for farm production kept going up but food prices remained pretty much the same. That made me wonder as to everyone talks about India being an agricultural economy and still in 2008, 60% of Indian population is employed in farming or dependent on farming for their livelihoods. Now if bread loaf price or milk price is same for last 5 or 10 years, would farmers not become poorer and poorer. It always made me sad.

Since last few months, I am seeing milk and food prices go up. I am very happy. There were some protests by political parties about increase in milk price by Re. 1 but no one would protest increase in car prices or school fees or price of other products. I am so glad that the political parties coy to instigate people to protest against milk price increase by a mere Re. 1 did not work. If milk price will not increase for 10+ years, how would farmers and others dependent on animal husbandary for their livelihoods ever come out of poverty? That Re. 1 increase is not going to make any difference to pockets or milk consumption or spending capacity of 35 crore middle class Indians but it is going to make a big difference in helping alleviate poverty among the bottom 26% of Indian population. Can't we even let go of some Rs. 30 a month to eliminate poverty in India??? Please note that after farming, 2nd largest section of Indians are dependent on animal husbandary especially selling milk.

So the food price increase this time is GOOD. It means better prices to farmers for their produce. Better prices for produce means, farmers make some profit and in some cases more profit than before. Bottom 60% of India gets richer and this 60% includes most of the 26% below poverty line population in India. So I am ecstatic. Are you? If you are an India, you will be and will stop protesting this increase in inflation but start rejoicing it.

Critiques will say, food price increase is not being passed on to farmers, middle men, merchants and others are making merry while farmers are getting nothing. They are wrong. Even when milk prices went up by Re. 1, farmers got Re. 0.50 out of it, which is a lot. If you don't believe me go ask the family that keeps 1 or 2 cows or buffalo. This food prices increase is percolating down to farmers. I can say that as i am also a farmer and i am fetching better prices for my produce. So critiques beware.

Pl check with the farmer you know, milkman you know and send me comments.

Ask the politicians to get off the case of inflation this time. Again they are trying to instigate the public to get election gains for upcoming Lok Sabha elections in 2009. India, let us celebrate our farmers getting richer, our cow rearing families being better off, our poverty reducing. Let us stop politicians from stopping Indians coming out of poverty.

Swades Ki Khoj 2008

2008-03-16T22:59:00.000+05:30

We have just commenced promotion for Swades Ki Khoj 2008. Our initiative to provide young graduates between the ages of 21 and 28 with the opportunity to spend a year living and working in a rural area and to possibly discover themselves.

The first cohort had 14 young people who have been spending the past year with an organisation located in one of these states - Rajasthan, Bihar, Jharkhand, UP, MP and Uttarakhand.

We would be delighted if you could pass this on to young people whom you think might be interested. If you know of an organisation that might be willing to host these young people for a year and would we willing to invest time in them, then please let us know.

V K Madhavan
madhavan@chirag.org

Inviting applications from young social changemakers

2008-03-12T18:08:00.000+05:30

Change Looms is a program that recognizes, encourages and supports the exceptional achievements of young people who are actively promoting social change in society. Applications are currently invited for Change Looms as well as other Pravah programs for youth. As many of you are working on issues related to social entrepreneurship in India, we would appreciate it if you could use your networks to spread the word about this opportunity to potential candidates.

Selection criteria: Candidates should be...

between the ages of 17-27
the founder and leader of an initiative addressing an issue of social justice
running an initiative which is youth-led, independent from existing organizations, on-going and in operation for at least 6 months, with long term plans for social change
implementing work directly on the ground
have working knowledge of English and/or Hindi

The last date for receiving applications for the 2008 batch is 31st March 2008. Application forms and relevant background information is attached.

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

CHANGE LOOMS is a support programme for young people who have started their own initiative for social change. Change Looms is a joint venture between Pravah (www.pravah.org & www.younginfluencers.com) and Ashoka: Innovators for the Public (www.ashoka.org), supported by the Youth and Civil Society Initiative of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust ( www.srtt.org) and Global Fund for Children (www.globalfundforchildren.org). More information about these organizations can be found on their websites.

The focus of Change Looms is to facilitate your learning and development as young people leading social change.

The key components of the Change Looms program are:

Development and Assessment Center (DAC):

Selected candidates will be invited to the DAC in July 2008. The DAC is a one-week residential workshop where you meet other youth from across the country to build your skills, refine your ideas and programme designs, reflect on yourself as a leader of social change, and receive feedback from peers and experiences social sector leaders. In the DAC, you develop a learning plan which you submit to Change Looms as your proposal for participating in the Learning Phase.

The Learning Phase:

Based on the learning plans submitted after the DAC, selected candidates will be invited for a six month Learning Phase. You are encouraged to work with a mentor, participate in collective learning events, go for exposure visits, invite resource people to engage with you, and participate in peer learning with other Change loomers. You will receive guidance and financial support to enable you to implement your learning plan.

Public Recognition:

Selected candidates are invited for a Public Recognition Event in Delhi.

Networking and further opportunities:

After completing the learning plan, you can apply for Organizational Development support from Change Looms, which includes a financial component of Rs. 40,000. As Change Looms alumni, you will also get access to other opportunities through different programs and partners.

NOTE: Change Looms is not a funding agency, and any financial assistance is purely linked to accelerating learning and development of youth leaders and their organizations.

Selection Criteria

Candidates should be...

between the ages of 17-27
the founder and leader of an initiative addressing an issue of social justice
running an initiative which is youth-led, independent from existing organizations, on-going and in operation for at least 6 months, with long term plans for social change
implementing work directly on the ground
have working knowledge of English and/or Hindi

Individuals or teams can apply. If applying as a team, you must designate an anchor to be the lead person in the Change Looms process. The anchor is expected to bring the learnings back to his/her team. As of now, Change Looms does not entertain applications from for-profit enterprises, one-off or event based initiatives, online initiatives, and support organizations

Lillian Strand

Change Looms Coordinator

Pravah
C-24B, 2nd FLoor, Kalkaji
New Delhi 110019
91 11 2644 0619, 2621 3918, 2629 1354
www.younginfluencers.com
lillian.strand@pravah.org

Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) announces a call for proposals to the YSEI Fellowship 2008

2008-03-12T18:05:00.000+05:30

Youth Social Enterprise Initiative (YSEI) is a high-engagement social venture program for emerging young social entrepreneurs in developing countries. Through its Fellowship Programme, YSEI provides young social entrepreneurs with support in four key areas:

Financing: Up to USD15,000
Knowledge: Essential development knowledge & tools on social entrepreneurship
Mentorship: Technical consulting through mentorship
Networks: Access to diverse networks

The Fellowship Programme consists in a competitive selection process to provide support to young social entrepreneurs.

20 workshop finalists would be identified to attend the upcoming YSEI Capacity Building workshop scheduled for May 2008. The deadline for submission is the 28th of Mar 2008.

To apply, please visit the following link (http://ysei.org/?q=node/69) and proceed to register and complete your online application.

The purpose of the Capacity Building Workshop is to both identify the batch of YSEI Fellows 2008 and provide capacity building support to all the finalists participating. This would entail refining the workshop finalists business plans, conducting further due diligence and nurturing a network of young social entrepreneurs and mentors.

YSEI aims to invest in young visionaries who have big ideas and who need crucial startup support to turn their ideas into action. The following are characteristics of ventures we aim to invest in:

* Ventures are led by youth from developing countries aged between 20 to 35 years
* Innovative social ventures with blended values (creation economic, social and/or environmental value components)
* Information & communication technologies (ICTs) are recognized as an integral part of the venture/ solution-provided
* Ventures that are specifically designed to solve social or environmental problems
* Ventures that have at least 6 months implementation

This round would only cover the Asia-region (East and South) as YSEI is in the midst of exploring replication of the program with other partners in the other regions. The replication of the program is expected to happen in the near future.

Although we encourage you to complete the application online, if you encounter problems, please download the application form and submit it to apply@ysei.org
The deadline for submissions is 28th Mar 2008.

The workshop finalists results are expected to be announced by the 10th April 2008.

The applications will be judged based on the YSEI Program criteria.

Yours sincerely,
YSEI Secretariat
Peerapond Chutisuntarakul

Coordinator | TRN Institute (trnlab.org)
T: +662.938.2636 F: +662.938.1877
Mobile: +6686.973.2906
peerapond@ysei.org

http://trnlab.org/
http://www.ysei.org/

LEAD INDIA - finally someone is paying attention

2007-10-06T19:35:00.000+05:30

Looks like finally even the corporate sector is facing the brunt of corruption, slumber, non-effectiveness, non-functioning, bureaucracy and many other problems that common man has with the govt. It can be seen from the fact that a leading media house of India has finally found the guts and courage to be part of the political process by helping bring better, educated, qualified, effective, visionary, worthy, professional leaders to the forefront. Thanks to Times of India, participative democracy being propagated by NGOs for last few years have taken a big step of actually participating in the elections. This contest is helping people rise, awake and stop not till the goal is reached. It is still a small effort. We need more corporates involved and we need more such contests. But good news is, it has started happening. People like me who run blogs or work with NGOs are not alone. We have a voice now, a voice that cannot be ignored. A movement that is starting to build up. I will like my fellow Indians to join in this movement in whatever way they want.

At this juncture, I will like to mention that we even have new political parties that have come about in last 1 year by Gen X. These parties are for development on India and provide an alternate to Indian National Congress (INC), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), RJD, DMK, AIADMK, JD, BSP, CPI, CPI (M) and many others. These were although started by IITians and others from equally elite colleges but have now formed a base of members that come from all walks of life and backgrounds - teachers, software engineers, professionals, businessmen, industrialists, men, women, poor, rich, metros, cities, towns and villages. These are Lok Paritran and Bharat Punarnirman Dal. Check them out. Talk to their leaders. Join them, be a leader. May be start your own political party. Do whatever you feel like, but do something to help make the change in India that we all want to see. Be the change, not just want the change.

Who are you calling a "social enterprise?!"

2007-08-13T17:30:00.001+05:30

By Mal Warwick

QUICKLY—define “social enterprise” in 25 words or less. No cheating now. No peeking at your neighbor’s paper!

Are you finished? Good. Now compare what you’ve written with your friends and neighbors. Are you all on the same page? No? Well, welcome to the crowd.

I’ve read a fair amount about this phenomenon we so loosely refer to as “social enterprise,” and I’ve spoken personally to many of those who are most often publicly identified as among its leading advocates—and not just here in the United States, but around the world. (For that matter, I’m even a member of the Advisory Board of the newsletter, Social Enterprise Reporter, that originally ran this article.)

Guess what? The “experts” don’t agree, either. In fact, their contrasting definitions appear to come from completely different mindsets. They might as well be from different planets. In an effort to sort through all this confusion, I’ve devised a nifty little diagram. Maybe it will help you, too, to find your way more smoothly through the field.

Here goes:
As you can see below, Quadrants 1 and 2 correspond to the revenue-generating model. In Quadrant 1, you’ll find parking garages operated by nonprofit hospitals to help underwrite their budgets and a plethora of other for-profit enterprises launched by nonprofit organizations to make money, pure and simple. Quadrant 2 holds such remarkable ventures as Newman’s Own, Working Assets Long Distance, and Give Something Back, all of which operate traditional businesses and dedicate most or all the profits to support a range of social-sector organizations. This quadrant also includes any businesses established independently of the nonprofits they support, but whose primary function is to funnel their profits to those particular organizations—if, in fact, there are any such businesses. (I, for one, can’t think of any.)

Defining Social Enterprise

	Social Sector	Business Sector
Revenue-generating	1. NGO generating revenue through a business enterprise to support its social mission	2. Business generating revenue to support the social mission of one or more NGO's
Problem-Solving	3. NGO established to address a social problem in an entrepreneurial manner	4. Business established to address a social problem in an entrepreneurial manner

By contrast, Quadrants 3 and 4 include those enterprises established primarily to address one or more social problems. Quadrant 3 includes such organizations as Goodwill Industries and Rebuild Resources, both of which engage in business to provide training and jobs to people who would otherwise face barriers to employment, and environmental organizations such as the Environmental Management Institute that operate as businesses but are organized as nonprofits. In Quadrant 4 lie those enterprises established as for-profit businesses rather than nonprofits, but whose nature is centered on its social mission. Shorebank comes immediately to mind—a precedent-setting bank operated and regulated like any other but dedicated to creating “economic equity and a healthy environment.”

What you won’t find in this typology are those businesses such as my own, Mal Warwick Associates as well as others much better known—that characterize themselves as “socially responsible” and pursue the “triple bottom line.” There are thousands of us, companies that operate with a view toward serving all our stakeholders,not just the owners. Many folks include us in the category of social enterprise. Wikipedia, for example.

I could shoehorn my company into Quadrant 4, since from the beginning our mission has been to raise money for progressive nonprofit organizations and political candidates, but most other triple-bottom-line companies don’t fit so neatly into that little rectangle. (Ben & Jerry’s? Selling flavored fat? Where’s the social mission in that?) That’s one reason why I think we don’t belong under the label “social enterprise.”

Another, much bigger reason is that I’m convinced all for-profit businesses will eventually be forced to acknowledge their responsibility to their customers, their employees, their suppliers, the community or communities where they do business, and to the environment. If that ever comes to pass, then presumably every business would be considered a social enterprise—robbing the term of all remaining sense. There are some who contend that every business already is, but from my perspective that just confuses matters. To my mind, a social enterprise is something special—not just another company. A social enterprise is conceived to address a social problem or challenge,either directly (Quadrants 3 and 4) or indirectly (Quadrants 1 and 2).

One more point: If you have more than a passing familiarity with the field, it will be obvious to you that many social enterprises straddle one or more of the quadrants in this typology. These are the enterprises generally referred to as “hybrids.” Greyston is an excellent example. Originally founded as a business to provide employment for the “unemployable,” the Greyston Bakery has since spawned several nonprofit enterprises which benefit from, but aren’t dependent on, its profits. That’s a hybrid operation in anyone’s book! Another fascinating example is Pura Vida Coffee, which is “changing the world, one cup at a time.” There are dozens of other brilliant examples. Still, most of the organizations that are normally described as social enterprises appear to fall into one or another of the four quadrants of this typology. I find it useful. I hope you do, too.

Giving Back: Why 'Social Enterprise' Rarely Works

2007-08-13T17:29:00.001+05:30

By Ben Casselman

For more than a decade, a number of nonprofits have been embracing the tactics of the for-profit world, starting businesses such as bakeries or catering companies that employ disadvantaged people while using the proceeds to help break free of the shackles of fund-raising.

But now some nonprofit leaders and academics argue that this "social enterprise" model is flawed. Few if any of the businesses set up by nonprofits are truly self-sustaining, they maintain, and many have failed. Moreover, some experts say an overemphasis on creating a viable business can detract from an organization's social mission.

In a report set to be released Monday, the Seedco Policy Center -- a newly formed research arm of a New York nonprofit called Seedco -- argues that "overzealous encouragement may have pushed too many nonprofits into ill-advised commercial projects." The report advocates a new model that embraces the entrepreneurial spirit of the business world without expecting social-service groups to be self-supporting. "There's no shame in subsidy," says Neil Kleiman, who heads the Seedco policy center and is one of the report's authors.

"Social enterprise" gained prominence in the 1980s and 1990s, as cutbacks in government grants and a downturn in private funding pushed many organizations to seek ways to generate revenue. Prominent grant-making organizations such as Pew Charitable Trusts and Kauffman Foundation began asking recipients develop plans to sustain themselves. Many nonprofits saw social enterprise as a way to become both more efficient and more independent.

Some nonprofits started businesses that generate a significant percentage of their budget, and a few approach self-sufficiency. FareStart of Seattle, which trains homeless people for food-service jobs and provides related services, generates about $1.5 million of its $3.5 million annual budget by providing food to soup kitchens and child-care centers, among other ventures.

Baltimore's Harbor City Services, a nonprofit moving and document-storage concern that hires workers with histories of mental illness and drug abuse, comes even closer to funding its entire budget. The organization has certain advantages, including loan guarantees that chief executive John Herron acknowledges wouldn't have been available to for-profit competitors. But Harbor City has operated for more than a decade without direct government support and without soliciting private donations.

Many efforts have been less successful, however. Mr. Kleiman and his fellow researchers say they failed to find a single subsidy-free social enterprise. Other studies, using different definitions, have found at least a few examples, but experts agree they are the exception. A 2001 survey, published in the Harvard Business Review, found that 71% of social enterprises lost money, even without factoring in indirect costs covered by their parent nonprofit.

Samantha Beinhacker, president of New Capital Consulting, which advises social enterprises, says most will always rely on grants or other subsidies -- and that isn't necessarily a problem. The risk, she says, is that in striving for self-sufficiency, nonprofits will miss other opportunities to achieve their missions.

That's what happened at Seedco. In 2001, the organization -- a 20-year-old nonprofit that runs work-force development and small-business support programs -- launched a program to provide emergency backup child care to low-income workers so that they wouldn't miss work when their primary child care fell through. It was set up as a social enterprise: Seedco contracted with child-care providers, then sold the program to businesses as an employee benefit. Seedco thought the program would cover much of its budget, help working parents keep their jobs, ensure quality care for their children and give business to small child-care providers.

But few employers joined the program, in part because it couldn't accommodate sick children or late shifts. And relatively few employees signed up, preferring to stay home with their kids rather than send them to a stranger's house. Seedco shut the program in 2003.

Mr. Kleiman says Seedco missed a chance to help its clients through more traditional means, such as looking for sustained government or foundation support to subsidize the program. "A lot of it was getting caught up in the [social enterprise] mantra," he says. Seedco President Diane Baillargeon adds that the program proved too complex, especially for an organization without experience in either business or child care.

Ms. Beinhacker says there's a lesson in such failures: "Stick to the thing that you know," she says. "Business is hard."

[Source: The Wall Street Journal: June 1, 2007]

A third of us live on Rs 20 a day

2007-08-10T14:38:00.000+05:30

By HT, Friday August 10, 2007, 01:09 AM

WHAT CAN Rs 20 possibly fetch? For 836 million Indians, Rs 20 per day, or Rs 600 a month, essentially buys them their daily sustenance. Technically, a large chunk of these 836 million Indians - 77 per cent of the country's population - are above the poverty line at Rs 12 per day.

But the reality is that they remain dismally poor, comprising largely of STs, SCs, OBCs and Muslims, according to the Report on Conditions of Work and Promotion of Livelihood in the Unorganised Sector - the first authoritative study on the state of informal or unorganised employment in India - compiled by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS), a government-affiliated body.

The report is based on government data for the period between 1993-94 and 2004-05. A staggering 394.9 million workers, or 86 per cent of India's working population, work in the unorganised sector, which means they work without a social security cover. Nearly 80 per cent of these workers are among those who live on less than Rs 20 per day.

NCEUS chairman Dr Arjun Sengupta said: "These are the discriminated, disadvantaged and downtrodden. People who live on Rs 20 or less per day are the real poor and vulnerable." Sengupta told HT that Rs 20, which signifies consumption pattern, is an indicator of the person's income and saving. "If people do not earn, how will they spend or save?" Agriculture, the report found, was a fertile ground for poverty, especially for small and marginal farmers, 84 per cent of whom spent more than they earned and were often caught in debt traps.

http://in.news.yahoo.com/070809/32/6j99i.html

Laws & Justice for ALL in India

NRI neurosurgeon donates $20 million to native village

2007-08-01T15:37:00.000+05:30

Tuesday July 31 2007 13:06 IST

IANS

NEW YORK: An Indian American who made millions as a neurosurgeon and lived a lavish life, once owning a Rolls-Royce, five Mercedes-Benzes and an airplane has donated $20 million to his native village in Kerala.

Kumar Bahuleyan, 81, who was born to a Dalit family in India, decided to donate his personal fortune as a gratitude to his village, to establish a neurosurgery hospital, a health clinic and a spa resort in Chemmanakary, in Kottayam district of Kerala.

"I was born with nothing; I was educated by the people of that village, and this is what I owe to them," Bahuleyan said in Buffalo where he has lived since 1973.

"I'm in a state of nirvana, eternal nirvana," he said. "I have nothing else to achieve in life. This was my goal, to help my people. I can die any time, as a happy man."

The urge to do something for his village arose some 20 to 25 years ago, when Bahuleyan returned to Chemmanakary and was struck by how little it had changed.

"The village remained absolutely the same - not a road, no school, no water supply, no sanitary facilities," he said. "I looked in the (people's) faces and saw the same people living in the same miserable conditions I had grown up with."

Bahuleyan has come full circle: from dire poverty in India, to the lifestyles of the rich in America and back to his native village, where he's traded his Mercedes for a bicycle, The Buffalo News reported.

The Indian American doctor lost two younger brothers and a sister to water-borne disease in 1930s. "I was the oldest, feeling very helpless, listening to the screams of these dying children, one by one," he told the paper. "Their cries stuck in my psyche. Even now it haunts me."

As a former 'untouchable', belonging to the lowest strata of Hindu society, Bahuleyan had to take a roundabout route to school because he wasn't allowed to pass within a few hundred yards of the Hindu temple.

A star student, he went to high school, then a premedical school run by Christian missionaries before attending medical college in Madras, now called Chennai.

Later he went to the United Kingdom for neurosurgical training at a college in Edinburgh, Scotland, where he spent six years before returning home. But he couldn't land a job in his specialty.

"They (government) didn't know what to do with me," he said. "There was no position available for a neurosurgeon. Many people didn't know what neurosurgery was."

So Bahuleyan went to Kingston and then Albany Medical College, before coming to Buffalo in 1973 to work with neurosurgeon Dr John Zoll.

Bahuleyan never saw ice cream until he was in medical college in his early 20s. And he remembers buying his first pair of shoes as a young adult; he put the right shoe on his left foot and realised it didn't fit.

During his 26-year career, Bahuleyan served as a clinical associate professor in neurosurgery at the University at Buffalo before retiring in 1999. And he made millions.

"I didn't ask for the money," he told The Buffalo News. "The money came to me. My secretary said to me, 'Dr Bahuleyan, you're making too much money.' I had never had any money. So I went berserk with money."

In 1989, he set up the Bahuleyan Charitable Foundation, which built a small clinic in India for young children and pregnant women in 1993 in south India. Bahuleyan's foundation built the Indo-American Hospital Brain and Spine Centre in 1996, starting with 80 beds.

None of the facilities carries his name. In 2004, the foundation opened the Kalathil Health Resorts, offering luxury rooms, health spas and exercise rooms.

Bahuleyan's latest idea, East India Seven Seas Sailing company, plans to invite applications from Americans willing to spend a few weeks in India, to volunteer in Bahuleyan's hospital and to teach sailing.

Bahuleyan, who lives with his wife, pathologist Indira Kartha, spends half the year in the US, the other half in India where he oversees his foundation's work, gets around on a bicycle and still does almost daily surgery.

http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IE820070731024456&Page=8&Title=NRIs&Topic=0&

Future of development in India

2007-02-13T12:39:00.000+05:30

We strongly believe that solution for poverty and social problems in India has two major solutions, namely, Micro-finance and Social Enterprises. Micro-finance includes micro-credit, micro-savings, micro-insurance, micro-pension and micro-health. Social Enterprises, Social Entrepreneurs and Enterprise Development is key for rural India. The for-profit business model with social ethics and values is the solution. Grant making is required but is not going to help solve the issues at a large scale that India requires.

Catalyst - Social Development Consultants P Ltd
EasyStoreHosting
Linux Bazar

List of Micro-finance (MF) funds

2007-02-13T12:33:00.000+05:30

MicroVest I
The Dignity Fund
The Calvert Social Investment Foundation
Bellwether Fund

If you know of any other MF Fund, please list it here.

Online SE groups

2007-01-03T01:28:00.000+05:30

http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Social-Enterprise/about

List of Colleges offering SE courses in India

2006-11-28T19:50:00.000+05:30

- Narsee Monjee Institute of Management & Higher Studies (NMIMS), Mumbai
- Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Mumbai
- Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM), Hyderabad

If you know of any other Social Venture Fund operating in India, please list it here.

List of Social Venture Funds / Venture Philanthropy support organisations

2006-11-28T18:06:00.002+05:30

- Fractal Foundation
- ennovent
- New Philanthropy Capital (NPC)
- Asia Venture Philanthropy Network
- The European Venture Philanthropy Association (EVPA)
- The Calvert Social Investment Foundation
- Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT)
- The Lemelson Foundation
- Permira & Community Action Network
- Impetus Trust
- PhiTrust Partners
- Social Impact
- Acumen Fund
- Aavishkaar India Micro Venture Fund
- UnLtd
- Omidyar Network
- Social Venture Partners Seattle

If you know of any other Social Enterprise Funds or Venture Philanthropy support organisations, please list them here or e-mail us and we will list them here.

Definitions - Social Entrepreneur / Enterprise / Venture Philanthropy

2006-11-28T17:30:00.000+05:30

Social enterprise makes a difference by matching supply with need.
by Dr Meena Galliara - Narsee Monjee Institute of Management & Higher Studies (NMIMS)

Social enterprise is profitable business run by community, for the community and profit & loss must be shared to community.
by Prema Gopalan - Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP)

Social enterprise is a for-profit entity setup with a mission to solve a social problem with a clear business and revenue model around the solution. A person who starts a social enterprise is a Social Entrepreneur.
by Surya Prakash Loonker - CATALYST - Social Development Consultants P Ltd (CSDC)

Venture Philanthropy is venture capital investments in social enterprises.
by Surya Prakash Loonker - CATALYST - Social Development Consultants P Ltd (CSDC)

Venture Philanthropy is an adventurous approach to funding unpopular social causes.
by John D Rockefeller III in 1969 in a hearing before the US congressional committee leading to the Tax Reform Act

Social Enterprise
GoodTree is not a charity. GoodTree is a Social Enterprise that seeks to do well in business AND do good for the world. Using the words of author J. Gregory Dees, we aspire to combine "the passion of a social mission with business-like discipline, innovation, and determination." We maintain the balance between social mission and business goals by creating self-sustaining companies made up of people who truly care, and by developing businesses that tap into a spirit of virtuous circles where everyone wins.
by James Currier, Founder/Advisor, GoodTree

2007 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship

2006-11-14T11:34:00.000+05:30

March 27-29, 2007
Saïd Business School, Oxford University, England

The 2007 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship will be held March 27-29, 2007, at Oxford University in England. The theme of the conference will be “Social Innovation and Diffusion.”

For further information, please visit - http://www.skollfoundation.org/skollcentre/skoll_forum.asp

Open Source Movement India (OSMI)

Invitation for an International Conference on Social Entrepreneurship (24th - 26th Nov 2006)

2006-10-07T01:24:00.000+05:30

International conference on Social Entrepreneurship being held from 24th – 26th Nov 2006 at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

The conference is being organised by UnLtd: The Foundation for Social Entrepreneurs, the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

The conference aims to:

1) Celebrate social entrepreneurship as a tool for social change
2) Encourage the development of social entrepreneurship in India
3) Create mutually beneficial links between UK and Indian social entrepreneurs and institutions

We are looking at bringing together:

1) Social entrepreneurs from India, the UK and internationally to share ideas and experiences, to network and to learn from leading practitioners in the field
2) Agencies that support social entrepreneurs, academic institutions, funders from India and the UK to discuss ways to promote social entrepreneurship in India

The conference, planned to be the first of an annual series, will present a unique opportunity to interact with inspiring changemakers. We hope you will join us in the creation of a new wave of social entrepreneurs leading social change in India.

Please note that interested participants (especially overseas participants) will have the opportunity to stay on for a further two days (27th – 28th) for project visits to see some inspiring aspects of Indian social entrepreneurship in action.

The complete conference materials will be available in October. However due to limited places at the conference, we request you to register your potential interest at the earliest. You can write to us at poojawarier@unltd.org.uk We will then provide you with further information and a registration form.

Pooja Warier
Development Consultant
PoojaWarier@unltd.org.uk

For information on the organisers, please look at the following websites:
Unltd –www.unltd.org.uk
Skoll - www.sbs.ox.ac.uk/skoll/
Tata Institute of Social Sciences - www.tiss.edu

Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in India

2006-05-29T16:09:00.000+05:30

Social Entrepreneur of the Year Award in India

Background

The Nand and Jeet Khemka Foundation (the Foundation is establishing the “Khemka Fellow” Awards for Social Entrepreneurs (SE) in co-operation with renowned organizations such as the Schwab Foundation.

Social entrepreneurs are pragmatic visionaries who achieve large scale, systemic and sustainable social change through a new invention, a different approach, a more rigorous application of known technologies or strategies, or a combination of these. They combine the characteristics represented by Richard Branson and Mother Teresa.

The Schwab foundation searches for social entrepreneurs around the world and selects them after a thorough due diligence process. Until today, the network includes 95 social entrepreneurs around the world. In each country one “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” is selected and celebrated. The Schwab Foundation chooses social entrepreneurs who have already established their venture, proven their business model and are on the verge of proliferating their vision.
Project

The Foundation will establish jointly with the Schwab Foundation a high-profile selection committee, who will select the “Social Entrepreneur of the Year in India”. The Foundation and the Schwab Foundation will jointly host a high profile national award ceremony at or close to the World Economic Forum - India Economic Summit (at the end of November) to honour the winner, who will be named the “Social Entrepreneur of the Year” and the finalists. Last year the winner was awarded by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The entire programme will be one of high visibility and will be promoted through prominent media coverage in terms of a series of articles and publications, TV and radio interviews, and through websites.

Send application to AMITA KAPUR at amikapur54@hotmail.com

List of Social Entrepreneur awards in India

2006-02-18T08:34:00.000+05:30

- iDiya by Indian School of Business (ISB)
- Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC)
- "innovation for india" awards by Marico Foundation & Erehwon Innovation Consulting
- Trident Group's Aavishkaar Awards by Abhishek Industries Limited
- “Khemka Fellow” Awards for Social Entrepreneurs (SE) in co-operation with the Schwab Foundation

If you know of any other Social Entrepreneur award available in India, please list it here.

List of Social Enterprises in India

2005-12-26T12:27:00.004+05:30

SammaaN Foundation
Under the Mango Tree
Vortex India
Education Access for All
Moksha-Yug Access
Inclusive Planet
Vaatsalya Healthcare Solutions
DesiCrew
Dial 1298 for Ambulance
LifeSpring Hospitals
Servals Automation
Village Hand
Women Tech
Satin Creditcare Network
Bandhan
Spandan
Gram Mooligai Co Ltd
Sasha
National Innovation Foundation
Villgro Innovations Foundation (formerly Rural Innovations Network)
Jiva
IDEI
Manthan Associates
Meghdoot Gramodyog Sewa Sansthan
Drishtee Development and Communication Ltd
Datamation Consultants P Ltd
CraftsBridge
IndusTree Foundation
Rang Sutra
Pardada Pardadi
BASIX
The Civil Society
Fumes International
Tiny Tech India
KRITI
Shri Mahila Griha Udyog
Mann Deshi Mahila Sahakari Bank
Soma

If you know of any other Social Enterprises in India, please list them here or send us the names and we will list them here.

Start a Social Enterprise to build an INDIA that you want

2005-07-16T16:22:00.000+05:30

NGOs have been playing a phenomenal role in changing India for the better for a long time now. In recent times, businesses are joining hands with NGOs for the same. With MNCs coming in to India in early 90s, they invested in the social development space as it was part of their corporate mandate even in their home countries. New age Indian companies followed suit.

In the last decade or so, a whole new breed of companies have started 'social enterprises. These are spearheaded by social entrepreneurs and yet these are different from social entrepreneurs such as Asoka's Social Entrepreneurs.

These social enterprises and entrepreneurs have started businesses with a difference. These businesses offer solutions/products to the market that is very difficult to capture, has innumberable difficulties to cater to, is very hazy in quantitative terms, with high risk. They raise money just like any other business from one's own pocket, friends, family, VC funds, other companies, banks etc. They pay interest and give returns on investment to their investors. They have income and expenses just like any other company. What they do not have are programme funds and donations like NGOs. They sell their product/solution and make their income.

There are several social enterprises in India today and they are growing. But we need thousands and lakhs of them now. Following are some social enterprises:

Drishtee Dot Com Pvt Ltd
Provides govt and private services to villagers in villages below 5,000 population through ICT for a small fee.
www.drishtee.com

Datamation Consultants Pvt Ltd
Specifically hires handicapped persons, widows, poor persons for their BPO work. Almost their entire staff is only from the above mentioned categories of society.
www.datamationindia.com

BASIX
Provides loans for livelihood generation to poor people in rural areas.
www.basixindia.com

Jiva
Provides healthcare services in rural India through cellphones and use of ayurvedic medicines.
www.jiva.org

What makes these businesses different is that:
- they are not NGOs, not dependent on charity money,
- they are not motivated by sheer profit, although it is their top priority as well,
- they evaluate all their decisions against social, ethical, moral standards,
- they measure their success both by ROI and SROI (social return on investment),

What needs to be done is:
- Existing businesses can change themselves into a social enterprise,
- Existing businesses can diversify into social enterprise product/solution,
- Businesses/Individuals/Investors/Banks/VCs can invest in social enterprises,
- Industry associations need to be started to support such social enterprises,
- Centre for Social Entrepreneurship should be setup for research, documentation, promotion, training etc in social enterprise
- Courses in Social Entrepreneurship can be started in MBA and other institutes on social entrepreneurship and social enterprises
- Setup fund to invest in social enterprises

Asian Institute of Management (AIM), Manila, Phillippines recently launched "Creating Space in the Market: Social Enterprise Stories in Asia", a Social Entrepreneurship Book. Edited by Marie Lisa Dacanay with a foreword by Dr. Eduardo Morató Jr., both AIM professors, the book documents 13 cases of significant or exemplary practices in social entrepreneurship in four Asian countries, namely, India, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines.The book aims to provide a comprehensive discussion on the birth and evolution of social entrepreneurship in Asia and how various elements of social entrepreneurship foster the growth of businesses in the marginalized regions of Asia. For inquiries, please contact Rosario Espino at respino@mail.aim.edu.ph

It is a movement that has been recently started and am sure will take over the world in years to come. It is not pure charity, not pure business, a good middle ground where we can all meet. Join the movement and bring about a change for yourself, your country and the world.

Green revolution to e-revolution - total indepedence

2005-05-02T17:59:00.000+05:30

To rise up the value chain in software industry we should not rely on someone else’s software like windows, oracle etc. because this will result in those companies always having the upper hand. The only way out of this trap is open source and hence open source is extremely important component of India’s growth strategy.

With our limited resources in India open source, which is free and easily accessible, Indians and Indian companies can develop software for OS, Database, Office, E-mail, Browser etc. etc. This will be cheap also for the users to buy and we will not be dependent on foreign software saving precious $$$. Also, just as we achieved independence from Britishers and then became self reliant in agriculture produce, its time for us to now become self reliant in day to day use Software products.

This will create millions of job opportunities for Indians inside India leading to eradication of poverty to a large extent.

ChandraPrakash Loonker
cp@vsnl.com

Follow the Chinese model

2005-05-02T17:54:00.000+05:30

Just like China is developing a socks city, a pant city, a shirt city, etc to ensure that they have extremely high growth in textile industry we also need to ensure that our core focus knowledge industry also grows well.

We should also build like a dozen knowledge cities. In each of the knowledge cities we should have IIT + IIM + IISc + AIIMS. The “Indian Institute” part being common amongst them will create the necessary hype around it for media to provide this good coverage. We should allow private sector to take 100% stake in these knowledge cities which will further ensure more hype and marketing around it.

Concentrating a certain industry in an area and developing infrastructure around it always attracts talent, investments and businesses. This model is amply proven by Chinese in their various export zones or specific product zones. India has also achieved a certain level of success in past with this model in their STP-software technology park concept and more recently in EPZ-export processing zones such as for floriculture, agriculture, leather, food processing, automotive etc.

ChandraPrakash Loonker
cp@vsnl.com

With changing times, the needs change : India does not need any more NGO/NPO, but sustainable development

2005-03-28T12:11:00.000+05:30

There are several ways to tackle the current unfortunate situation(s)
prevailing in India. The need of the hour is a fast, visible change. Such a change is possible via (1) increased participation of common people in the nation-building/reforming process; (2) making conditions amenable so that the right people (bureaucrats, IAS officers, etc.) are in the right place; and (3) improving the economic scenario of people, esp. in the rural areas where still 70 percent of our population resides.

All the above three action programs will be most effective when they are implemented either in a parallel fashion or in quick succession. Needless to say, within each action agenda, there can be various ways to go about implementing them. A few possible ways are outlined below which calls for reader's attention.

Interestingly, NRIs can play a direct or indirect yet influential roles in all the above three areas.

1. National Level Seminar or Lecture Series : People's Participation

Hope, ideas, passion sustain life and its encompassing progress. With the current level despair prevailing in the country, the first thing that can help us see the light at the end of the tortuous tunnel is HOPE.

To generate this HOPE, a national level seminar/lecture series in all 530 districts on a national basis by scores of speakers aggresively for an year (and at a slower pace thereafter) is proposed. The details of which are outlined below :

- Identify and have big personalities, the stalwarts like Arun Shourie,
Kiran Bedi, Girish Karnad, Nani Palkhiwala, Ratan Tata, Sam Pitroda, Parmeshwar Rao, ManMohan Singh, T N Seshan etc. to speak at various key locations. These are the people that have seen the system, had stood for their beliefs, most importantly survived, and in turn brought subtle yet perceptible changes in the system.

[Money will be needed to pay for all the expenses + presentation facilities ]

- the speakers choose the topics they want to speak (of course topics need to be non-controversial, development and society-related and thought provoking). Let these speakers address the issues that they think is important with a good dose of motivation mixed in their speeches.

- through dialogues and participatory speeches these speakers give the
audience a local (or national ?) vision and there is one-to-one
interaction between the two.

- Each motivated individual will come up with her own set of ideas and
action programs based on his thought process and societal background.
Thus, these motivated people, which may range from just one to hundreds, will be provided with sufficient information (on hard copy) about NGOs, ideas, local activists, willing and helpful business people whom they can contact for pursuing and transforming their newly found hopes/ideas into action.

This chain action-reaction in individuals will hopefully bring the light at the far end of the tunnel appear closer and even brighter. Each motivated individual will act like a "small" lighthouse to himself and a few around him.

2. Catalysing/Lobbying to get the right bureaucrats quickly in an
administrative place where they can make drastic changes affecting the
population at large.

If you see why people are so much aware of elections, election commission, voting, candidates, spending in elections etc. - it is mainly because of one person T N Seshan. Why we have STD facilities in every nook and corner of India - because of Sam Pitroda. Why Surat is so clean, has footpaths, wide roads, and people are more socially aware of their duties in Surat - it is mainly attributed to S R Rao. Why Bangalore is changing is so rapidly
and it will be a world-class city like London, New York - because of its new commissioner. The list of examples can go on.

But the point is that on a daily basis, no where in the world do the
politicians actually run the country - it is a handful of bureaucrats
because of whom the system works or does not work. The point here is not that if T N Seshan is a great person or S R Rao is a wonderful guy or one of these should be made the Prime Minister of India. The point is that we really just need a few bureaucratic positions filled with right, honest, motivated, go-getter IAS officers.

The politicians always listen to the NRI community because of their
(misplaced, superficial, wealth, whatever) aura. Now if this influence can be used to lobby to get the right candidates quickly into positions where they can make the change without being jerked around, the country will change at a much faster, visible rate. In other words, we need some key people at central govt. bureaucracy and some bureaucrats at state levels. A big task but not humungous, difficult but not impossible.

The Plan of Action :

- Identify the honest, go-getter IAS officers involved in various sections of the day-to-day governance in India. This is to be done via individual contacts and media reports.

- Identify the people (Ministers, Senior IAS officers) who influence the transfer/promotion of IAS officers i.e. find the influential people in the system (note : these may or may not be corrupt)

- Use NRI power (economic influence, contacts, money) to influence these 'influential people' and get the honest IAS offices higher and higher up in the bureaucratic ladder. The NRI power can come from big shot NRIs like CEOs, economists, etc. as well as collective voice of support from average, concerned NRIs - common individuals like you and me.

3. The Indians across the globe should start on their own, fund new ventures, or partner with their friends/relatives in India; to start several labour intensive businesses/industries in villages, towns, cities. A small company employing even 10-100 people can do as good as a few NGOs together and more importantly, it brings in sustainable
development and creates real wealth within the country.

When you are employing a person, you are supporting an entire family (on average 5 persons). In Indian context you go much beyond that because if you are supporting a family you are supporting the brothers/sisters of the person whom you are employing and his/her spouse's brothers/sisters and their families. You will understand this more clearly if you just think of your own family and how the entire web of brothers/sisters etc. is helped/supported by each other in India. So just giving one salary, you are fending for their education, health, food, living, children, brothers, sisters, their families, clothes etc. So just one company does a sustainable development for 250 individuals. Out of these 250 individuals on an average one can expect 2 individuals to donate, volunteer, join an NGO, start a business, be a successful enough bureaucrat to influence the society for good or be a school teacher etc.

Again, a business needs a lot of things and so in turn support at least 10 other business/industries by purchasing services/goods from them, each of whom in turn support on an average 250 persons each just as your company.

If we go on like this, this domino effect is endless and is the most sustainable.

This company/business/industry can be as simple as a grocery store, electrical or plumbing shop, petrol station, courier franchise etc or as no profit enterprise as school, college, library etc or as complex as food processing plant, airplane manufacturing facility, corporate orchards, gardens, farming etc. depending on the level of investment available, how involved you want to be, etc.

For the above you do not have to go back to India for good, you just have to identify among your friends, relatives, contacts or just any person whom you can trust enough to work on a long distance business relationship. It does not have to be a business where the services/goods are sold in some other country.

When people have their basic needs taken care of, they do not go into anti-social activities, they are more aware and try to remain in the legal system.

If NRIs world over even start one business per NRI, we will change the entire country for good. But again, to expect every one to do is impractical, so we just need a handful of NRIs to do large # of such businesses in different fields in different geographical areas across the country.

Details on States, UTs, Districts of India

2005-02-25T16:16:00.000+05:30

Today India has 29 States and 6 UTs as follows:

Andaman & Nicobar (UT)
Andhra Pradesh
Arunachal Pradesh
Assam
Bihar
Chandigarh (UT)
Chhattisgarh
Dadra & Nagar Haveli (UT)*
Daman & Diu (UT)*
Delhi
Goa
Gujarat
Haryana
Himachal Pradesh
Jammu & Kashmir
Jharkhand
Karnataka
Kerala
Lakshadweep (UT)
Madhya Pradesh
Maharashtra
Manipur
Meghalaya
Mizoram
Nagaland
Orissa
Pondicherry (UT)
Punjab
Rajasthan
Sikkim
Tamil Nadu
Tripura
Uttar Pradesh
Uttaranchal*
West Bengal

* Website presently not available

These States and UTs are divided into 602 Districts and details of these Districts can be found at:
http://districts.nic.in/

Pick your village at Smart Villages.

Please start the blog for your village and list the URL here. A suggestion is to Name your Blog as follows:
DevelopYour[VillageName][DistrictName][StateOrUTName]India. blogspot.com

Real world example

2005-02-24T17:40:00.000+05:30

What we are aiming at is what has happened for Tavdi village in Gujarat.
http://www.tavdivillage.com/

We would like Indians in India/Diaspora Indians to form groups such as Tavdi village group meaning if you are from Ahore, Jalore District, Rajasthan State, join hands with others like you from Ahore spread across the world and start discussions among yourselves. Decide on development work needed in your village, work with NGOs in Anore village or Jalore District or Rajasthan State and execute the development projects such as road construction, water tank, school building, college, hospital, library, micro-enterprise, micro-credit, SHGs etc.

If we can get Indians from each of 6 lakhs villages to setup 6 lakhs discussion groups on this blog, meet and interact with people from their own village and finally contribute and execute the development work in their own village, India will be a developed country in 15 years.

This group can act as a coordinating agency for the 6 lakhs village development groups and help them identify NGOs and projects in their village.

Join the movement.

A Private Global Fund for India's Development

2005-02-24T17:23:00.000+05:30

From among the 21 million Diaspora Indians, we are looking for only 0.6 million Diaspora Indians who would adpot 1 village each from among the 0.6 million villages of India for next 10 years and invest a minimum of USD 25,000 per year for next 15 years in their adopted village. They can invest for building roads, water tanks, schools, hospital, health project, SHG formation, community organisation and development, environment, tree plantation and so on and so forth.

The projects will be executed through partner NGOs. One NGO in each District and UT is identified as the District/UT Level Nodal NGO. This District/UT Level Nodal NGO will identify one NGO per Block as the Block Level Execution NGO.

The Block Level Execution NGO will execute your projects in its Block as per your specifications and requirements. Training will be provided in Project Proposal Writing, Project Management, Project Execution, Accounts, Human Resources, Reporting, Leadership, Team Building to all these 2 Levels of NGOs.

10% of the invested amount per year will be utilised as follows:
2.5% Coordination and Administrative Fees
2.5% Capacity Building and Training Fees for all NGOs
2.5% District/UT Level Nodal NGO Administrative Fees
2.5% Block Level Nodal NGO Administrative Fees

Rest of the 90% funds will be used for actual project expenses.

Pick your village at Smart Villages.