Thumbs up, thumbs down

A thoroughly inspiring story reminding us that the most important examples of innovation occur where we least expect them to.
Farmers who visit Amai Mahalinga Naik’s two-acre plot on the hilltop near Adyanadka in Dakshina Kannada district of Karnataka return spellbound. Irrigated farming at this height is very surprising. This 58-year-old illiterate farm labourer has developed [...]

Reminder: The Social Entrepreneur of the Year 2008 - INDIA

We have mentioned this opportunity before. But the folks from Nand & Jeet Khemka Foundation wanted us to throw in a reminder to our readers about the ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ Award 2008. The deadline is for application is 5th June, 2008 and you can access the online application here.
Here are some basic details [...]

Unitus to recieve $9 million support from Omidyar Network

IndiaWest Online reports that Unitus, Seattle and Bangalore based organization providing consulting support to MFIs, just received a $9 million grant from Omidyar Network. The grant is meant to support expansion of Unitus programs beyond India.
The article features one of Unitus partners, MokshaYug Access (MYA). MYA recently received $2 million funding from Unitus Equity [...]

Start-ups gain from entrepreneurial education

Indian start-ups will gain from the increasing trend in business schools to offer the services of their students in developing business plans and conducting analyses - in return, students have an incredible opportunity to work with some of the most innovative start-ups in the country and gain practical experience before they even graduate. Mint reports:

Such [...]

[TC-I Changemaker]: CGAP’s Gautam Ivatury on the linkage between technology and financial empowerment of the poor

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tab.
This week, Vinay sat down (over the phone) [...]

Civil Disobedience Comes to Life in Traffic-Infested Bombay

Those of us who have lived in an urban area in India know how traumatizing (and potentially life-threatening) the pedestrian’s experience can be. Horns blaring, buses hurtling towards intersections at breakneck speed, motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic, ineffectual traffic lights (at times flashing both red and green), debris littering pedestrian pathways (if [...]

Social Intrapreneurs

SustainAbility’s new publication, “The Social Intrapreneuers: A Field Guide for Corporate Changemakers,” features a case study on Hindustan Unilever’s Shakti project.  SustainAbility defines the social intrapreneur as:
Social intrapreneur, n. 1 Someone who works inside major corporations or organizations to develop and promote practical solutions to social or environmental challenges where progress is currently stalled by [...]

TC-I Tidbits

Your daily dose of headlines:

Can India meet the MDGs on access to safe drinking water? Keya Acharya has this interesting analysis [via OneWorld South Asia]
Thai fruit wine, responsible outsourcing and organic cotton - some of the interesting ideas competing in the finals of the Global Social Venture Competition happening today
Sierra Club, one of the oldest [...]

TC-I is looking for Part-Time Writers

Organizational Background
ThinkChange India is the fastest growing blog focused on social entrepreneurship and social innovation in India. Within its first ten weeks, the blog achieved 16,000 page-views, and is currently averaging 400 unique hits a day. Our goal is to be the primary source of information/analysis on social innovation and social entrepreneurship in the context [...]

Update: Bhandan gets featured in Business Standard

I have written on Bhandan before, with regard to its efforts to incorporate job creation into its larger loans disbursed to micro enterprises looking to grow. Well now the organization is once again pushing new initiatives as the MFI’s CEO Chandra Shekhar Ghosh is trying to both grow Bhandan’s organizational footprint while simultaneously create schools [...]

Reliance Rural Mobile Application Contest 2007 - 08 Deadline April 30th

From now own, competitions like these will be included in a once a week post on Thursdays that compile any opportunities relevant to our readers in an easy to find post. However, given that the Reliance Rural Mobile Application Contest’s deadline will have passed before we had the opportunity to post on it, we wanted [...]

[TC-I Changemakers]: Interview with Maya Ajmera of The Global Fund for Children

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tab.
Maya Ajmera is the Founder and President of [...]

[TC-I Changemakers] A book for every child — the mission for Pratham Books

The ThinkChange India staff is committed to providing our readers with interviews with people we believe are at the brink of something special but have for the most part been overlooked by the mainstream media. Readers will be able to see other conversations under our TC-I Changemakers tab.
This week we had the opportunity to [...]

Cellphones and (Rural) Development, Part Two

The agricultural sector employs 2/3 of India’s population, and contributes to 1/3 of its gross domestic product (GDP) - yet, Indian farmers in rural communities are plagued by debt, falling commodity prices, changing weather patterns, fluctuating demands in the global market, and failing crops. In regions such as Vidarbha, farmer suicides are endemic, to [...]

An Analysis of Rising Social Entrepreneurs

Echoing Green released a report with the results from a survey of their semi-finalists for the 2008 Echoing Green Fellowships (which Santhosh previously featured here).  The report reveals the characteristics of these rising social entrepreneurs, with some interesting findings, as highlighted by the Echoing Green Blog:
1) Innovative Models: Almost 30 percent of them were proposing hybrid nonprofit/for-profit [...]