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.
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, 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
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.
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.
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.
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 socialentrepreneurship
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 andnot 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 4,000Students: 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 Centerfor Social Initiative & Management (CSIM) is a business school for social work professionals. CSIMhelps 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
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.”
