SE-session 9: Project Management

I would like to start off at the last! My take home of the day! (more of a suggestion than a rule of thumb though)

Identify what your beneficiaries need, sensitize the beneficiaries about their need and your solution, involve the beneficiaries of the social initiative to participate and if possible manage the initiative.

Project planning should be approached from a mixture of top-down and a bottom-up approach. Top-down, as in using "from the book" ideas like management and leadership principles, business models etc. Bottom-up as in getting to know what the beneficiaries (or end users) want and forming strategy based on that.

The class started off with some basics about project management. It is not only a science, as it involves rational thinking, data analysis and decision-making, but also an art since it involves getting the job done using your wits.

We moved on to a brief analysis of the difference between a program and a project.

Program: Long-term or on-going activity, continually funded and has regular allocation of budget. Example: National literacy mission

Project: Usually short-term, one-time funding. Usually a program is made up of a lot of projects that achieve the purpose of a program

Following this, we discussed a questionnaire, answering which one may have planned an entire project well considering all aspects and would be ready to hit the road. This took us all the way up to the break and formed a very important learning session of the class (so, don't skip the link!)

During the second half of the session, the instructor presented the way his initiatives in eliminating rural poverty made an impact in the livelihood of the rural society. He devised and designed various initiatives for the benefit of rural poor in various sectors like agriculture, education, micro-finance, health, income generation.

He talked about the federated model of self-help group (summarized by slide-3 of the PDF doc) in Andhra Pradesh, which was a run-away hit in the whole of the country. The success of the model was summarized by the fact that about 42% of all the money allocated by the Indian government is used by AP, while the repayment rate is 98%, unmatched by any other SHG anywhere else. Delegates from other states and even countries like Vietnam visit AP to study the SHG model.

Since this post is not about singing the praise of AP's SHG models, I move beyond to aspects that are common to all the government projects (including SHGs) that he was involved.

• All project involved formation of Village organizations (VOs) which essentially is a representative body of the village. They were legally registered as co-operatives. All SHGs and VO are composed of women from the village
  
• The relevant govt. representatives train and sensitize them about the need of the co-operative. (If it is agriculture.. training is on retaining profit and eliminating middle-men during procurement... if it is micro-finance, training is on how important savings is etc..)
• Once training is done, the initiative is implemented and the outcomes are measured!

The model of sensitizing and involving the beneficiaries in various levels from management to volunteering has largely produced good results (will be evident from the slides of the session that I will post once they are available to me). But few do fail to scale up after initial success.

The whole session was finally summarized by the discussion titled "Why do projects succeed?"
highlighting the points user involvement as a participant, continuous funding, Clear understanding of goals, effective planning and setting realistic expectations of scope, quality and time involved.

By the then, we were about half-an-hour past time and we didn't even realized it. (I was especially mesmerized by the facts and figures he presented by the success stories of SERP's rural development initiatives). But he left us with a mention that goals should be SMART

Specific: Well-defined and clear to project managers
Measurable in terms of qualitative parameters
Agreed upon by all stakeholders
Realistic, as in set within the availability of resources
Time-based

Brief Profile of Mr B. Ravi Shankar

Mr. B. Ravi Shankar has completed Post Graduate Diploma in Computer Applications and also in Management (Rural development) from Xavier’s Institute, Ranchi.

Earlier he worked as a project officer in the Society for Rural Industrialization, Ranchi, Jharkhand, as a Community Coordinator in Girijan Cooperative Corporation, AP, and as a Project Director of Leather Industries Development Corporation of AP. He also has the experience of working in IT sector for sometime. Presently he is the Project Manager of Society for Elimination of Rural Poverty (SERP), (IKP-VELUGU project), AP.

SE-Session 8: Running a successful social enterprise

Today's session was very less of a presentation and more of a discussion session. The instructor started out by asking each student's objective and encouraged us to think back and identify one instance that caused a "shift" in us towards social entrepreneurship. His belief is that the answer to what social transformation we want to bring lies there (I feel while this may be true, it need not apply universally to all!).

After that elaborated on eSafal, a social enterprise that he conceived to provide an IT enabled, integrated approach to making agriculture. He discussed his initiative as a "case study" to provide an idea of what forms a successful social initiative. As part of implementing his process, he identified different aspects involved in this like

1. Investments (seeds, fertilizers) and people involved there
2. Farming techniques
3. Output (and people involved like consumer companies, middlemen).

He came up with a process to train the farmers on improved farming techniques to save on inputs (fertilizers, water), reduce waster (during transportation etc), improve quality of produce (cotton in this case).

He discussed this idea to drive home the following points (at least these are all what I perceived from his example)

• Identify your target beneficiary group in specific. (It may be kids...but are the school children or are they uneducated kids?)
  
• Identify various aspects involved in your initiative and identify stakeholders in each aspect
• Create a business model which benefits every stakeholder, so that it provides a reason for him/her to invest in it.
• When you identify a problem, track the problem all the way back to its root cause and eliminate the root cause. For example, cotton produced by farmers were contaminated by human and animal hair, threads from dress farmers wear. This costs the cotton buyer a lot of money to improve quality of cotton, he worked to modify the process used for harvesting and transportation of cotton to eliminate contamination at source, which saved a lot of cost to the consumer. This in turn translated to more money for the farmers.
  
• Remember the triple bottom line Profit, People and Environment. Measure the impact of your social initiative in terms of all the three and and in terms of social impact it has caused (improved standard of living, better education, better soil quality etc.)
• Social Return on Investment.

In an email communication to me later, Mr. Ravi summarized the session as follows.

Based on the conversation, the takeaway from the conversations I had with all of you - to start or be with an NGO - in a nutshell are

1. Identify ONE AREA which is your PASSION
   
2. Do complete study on the various aspects of that area chosen and take the best practices already at work in the world…RESEARCH, RESEARCH….
   
3. Do a pilot with a small target group and – check out all the issues, challenges that are being faced…
   
4. DOCUMENT the processes and brainstorm with similar mind set people
   
5. Create a MODEL which is a sustainable one…slightly bigger than the Pilot and showcase the sustainability and the SROI
   
6. Market the Model with a group of investors and make it work
   
7. Scale the area of operations to check out the challenges and issues being faced…
   
8. Document and fine tune the process and market with funding agencies SCALE it up in new areas.. or locations …

Bottom Line

1. ensure that the community buys in the model,
   
2. train and build capacity in the community that they take over the processes
   
3. The community pays a token amount for the services they get..
4. The other stakeholders get value for the investment they make…
   
5. Have everything transparent
   
6. Publicise it through Word of Mouth, Media, different workshops and events…DON’T be shy of talking about it….

Take-home of the day

Model the social enterprise to benefit each stakeholder, not just the end beneficiary

Calculate the Social Return on Investment

Create a process and document it well. Creating a process will help maintain a quality of implementation (the absence of the person who conceived the idea will not compromise the quality of execution). Documentation keeps every one on the same page

Brief Profile of Mr. Ravi Shankar
Mr. Ravi Shankar is a postgraduate in Operations Research and a graduate in Mathematics from University of Delhi, India. Earlier he as a member of senior Management team in Satyam Computer Services and Nagarjuna Fertilizers ltd., Hyderabad.

He is the Creator of eSafal,(a social enterprise based on application of IT in rural development).. He successfully implemented a pilot project on this enterprise in 2005. This model focused on value creation at all levels by participation and involvement of all stake holders. In 2006, this model was judged as the finalist in Global Social Venture Competition. Presently he is consultant to Government Departments and Rural Development Projects. He is also an Advisor to NGOs like Roshan Vikas.

SE-Session 7: Fund raising is not begging

I was not able to attend the session as I was out in Chennai enjoying a break...having herbal food at a Malayali health restaurant. So, I requested a classmate of mine (incidentally a keralite himself!) to capture a few points out of the session. So, I credit this work to him.

"Fund-raising is not begging...Enjoy fund-raising"

This was the punch line of Michael norton's sesion on fundraising and sustainability. Below are the important aspects of his session apart from the ppt and document provided:

• Money is not in fact never the most important thing.
• Getting too much money is a bigger problem than having no money.
• Streams of income for a sustainable model
• Concentrate on getting money from independent source.
• Vision and mission statement are useless!!! Have a vision of better world and be missionaries!
• Build relationships
• NEVER do fund-raising through email
• NEVER send mail to unknown people
• Rely on telephone/personal meetings
• Parties are effective,invite friends & friends' friends
• Story of Beacon & eggs: involved like the hen and committed like the pig
• Without local support successful org cant survive.involve local people.
• Story of New York beggars.
• Fund-raising is a relief from boredom;helps people to do what they want to do
• www.kivo.org : people helping people
• Convert NO into YES!!!
• Explained some initiatives like dinner@home, hunger banquet
• Individuals & communities as constant source of income.
• Be a donor;he urged SEOP batch to maintain a fund.

Later he went on to explain how to write a proposal and also about budgets. Check out www.365act.com

A BRIEF PROFILE OF MICHAEL NORTON
Michael Norton is the Honorary Director and a Trustee of CIVA (www.civa.org.uk).
He founded the Directory of Social Change in 1975 and was its Director until 1995. DSC is the UK's leading agency providing information, training and support to voluntary organisations. (www.dsc.org.uk). He co-founded UnLtd, the foundation for social entrepreneurs, which received the £100 million Millennium Legacy as an endowment. UnLtd makes awards of up o £20,000 to individuals in the UK who wish to create change in their communities. He chaired the International Year of Volunteers 2001 youth programme for England. He received an OBE in 1998 for services to the voluntary sector.He is the author of numerous books on fund-raising and charitable status including 'Writing Better Fund-raising Applications' , 'The WorldWide Fundraiser's Handbook' , and 'The Complete Fund-raising Handbook' , all published by Directory of Social Change.

SE-Session-6: Field visit to NGO Bhumi

In this session, we made a field visit to Government High School at the heart of Rasoolpura, known as the largest slum in Hyderabad (some say in AP). This school was adopted by Bhumi, an NGO that aims at large scale, holistic, sustainable transformation for the slum (and for the larger society in a long term).

Bhumi's members Sai and Pallavi (one of CSIMs students too!) greeted us and gave an outline of their flagship Dhronacharya and Ekalavya program (DNE) in which Bhumi trains and deploys volunteers to mentor the school children on a weekly basis on academics and extra-curricular activities. The program seems to spring from the notion that kids in the slum study better when they are exposed to an "elder-brother-cum-role model" who can inspire and provide them a regular learning environment.

Abdul Mujib Khan, one of the founding members of Bhumi, provided a brief account of their history. Rasoolpura, like any other urban slum, faced multiple interlinked problems. Poverty resulting in child labour, in turn resulting in low academic performance and high dropouts. Poor conditions resulting in poor health problems, in turn resulting in loss of wage which compounds the problem of child labour and education. Further, the cynicism of the slum dwellers towards the "outsiders in Proline T-shirts" posed another layer challenge.

To address the first problem, Bhumi has divided its task in Rasoolpura into four domains viz., Livelihood, Education, Healthcare and Water & Sanitation. Then it adopted the then dilapidated Govt. High school. and with funding from Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan and Hyderabad Round table, they renovated the school, hired teachers and got the school back up and running. This automatically helped Bhumi address the second problem too as the promise kept acted as a good testimony to their commitment to area. With more kids in school on a regular basis, the DNE program was launched in an effort to improve the pass percentage (then a dismal 13%) among 10th std kids. To improve the livelihood, Bhumi used the trust built to constitute about 6 self-help groups among the womenfolk (headed by a slum-dweller named Razia).

A crucial aspect that needs addressing in improving this society, they said, is the mentality slum-dwellers towards the SHG in general and using the loaned money in particular. As expected, the primary modes of income to people in the slum are fruit and vegetable hawking, house-help, working as a driver or running an autorickshaw. Since the livelihood is always hand-to-mouth, the mentality to save and planning for the longer term was lacking and took repeated counselling to attain a decent awareness level present now. Further, when Razia tried to spread the idea of forming a "group" the first question they usually asked was "How much money will I get?".

Bhumi is also involved in improving the other dimensions of the problem that affects education. Health. One school of thought suggests that children brought up with inadequate nutrition till the age of 5 show learning disabilities that affect them for the rest of their life. They took the initiative to bring in some students of medicine to conduct "Bailey's test" and found that about 20% of them fail the test. However, since medical treatment needs to be sustained over a long term for improvement, it is challenging to keep the respective families interested.

With the slum-dwellers increasingly placing their trust on them, Bhumi is also working on slowly training and transfering the control of their initiatives to the local slum-dwellers, though this seems to be a long objective.

A few other takeaways from the field visit

Their initiatives, especially with respect to education, are modeled in such a way that it can be "sold" to the government to adopt as an accepted model of education (am a bit confused about this, asked for clarification, will update!)

Bhumi seems to have extensively used the help of CSIM, who I have found myself are larger directory of contacts than "YellowPages" if you are a social entrepreneur. They have also helped Bhumi is redesigning their DNE mentoring program.

Most of their successful initiatives have been field tested on a smaller scale (say, applied to a smalller section of the slum) and then have been scaled up. Probably a good point to remember.

Overall, Bhumi provides quite a few lessons to learn the easier way. The biggest lesson of it all is probably the way they have conquered the trust of the slum-dwellers by delivering on the promise of renovating and bringing the school alive, which seems to have had an immediate effect on families the students hail from and those who live in the adjoining areas.

SE-Session 5: Communications

Father of Contemporary Communication – Wilber Scram

He coined the below formula of communication: SMCNRF

Sender Message Channel Noise Receiver Feedback

Different types of communication:

1. Intrapersonal

2. Interpersonal

3. Team

4. Organizational

5. Mass

Communication the ART is primarily a collective cultural process.

Communication the SCIENCE is a research driven consultative process involving planning design & implementation of strategic interventions.

Dimensions of Communication

1. Soft Skills

2. Business Communication

3. Mass Communication

4. Communication Management

5. Professional Communication

Father of Management – Peter Drucker

1. Soft skills : People skills/life skills/transfer skills/social skills

2. Hard skills: Technical skills/Occupational skills

Dimensions of Soft skills

1. Personal Competence

1. Self Awareness

1. Emotional Awareness

2. Accurate Self Assessment

3. Self Confidence

2. Self Management

1. Self Control

2. Trustworthiness

3. Conscientiousness

4. Adaptability

5. Innovation

3. Motivation

1. Achievement driven

2. Commitment

3. Initiative

4. Optimism

2. Social Competence

1. Empathy

1. Serve Others

2. Understand others

3. Develop others

4. Leverage diversity

5. Political Awareness

2. Social skill

1. Influence

2. Communication

3. Conflict Management

4. Leadership

5. Change Catalyst

6. Building bonds

7. Collaboration & Cooperation

8. Team Capabilities

Business Communication

· 3Ps – Power ,Profit & Pleasure

· Life is business – Peter Drucker

Mass Communication

1. Media writings

2. Media Productions

3. Media Research

4. Media Ethics

5. Media Management

Communication Management

1. Advertisement

2. Public Relations

3. Market Research

4. Corporate Communication

5. Brand Management

6. Event Management

Communication Competency

1. Invisible Competency

Visible competency is knowledge & skills

Invisible competency:

1. Attitudinal Traits – Attitude is mindset by Peter Drucker.

2. Behavioral traits

3. Character – combination of principles, values, ethics &habits

4. Talents – Interest & Aptitude

5. Experience

6. Values

7. Flair – Unique/novel/appealing style

8. Culture – fit

2. Thinking skills

1. Critical

2. Appreciative

3. Analytical

4. Creative

5. Decision making

6. Problem solving

7. Questioning

8. Interpretation

SE-session 4: Legal aspects in NGO management

If you have even been reading this series of posts faithfully, I am sure this posts header would have turned you off. When I went for today's session, my objective was to keep myself awake till tea is served after about an hour of class and hope the tea will keep me awake till the break at the end of two hours. After that...well, no tea, and I would use my right to sleep! :)

But the instructor, Mr. M. Anant Kumar, a chartered accountant with over 30 years of experience made it reasonably interesting. The session was divided into two sessions

1. Three Categories of NGOs

2. Income Tax laws governing NGO sector

Both the section had so many fine details govern our responsibilities while forming, registering and maintaining the finances of NGOs that this session will not obviate the need of legal consulting when one starts an NGO. The first section does have a larger story, while income Tax laws section was just an accumulation of pieces of laws . So, I will focus on the first section and give a one-line treatment to the second section.

1. Three categories of NGOs.

• Trusts
• Societies or associations
• Section 25 companies

Trusts

Trusts are organizations run by "trustee(s)" entrusted using an "instrument of trust" (legal document which you never understand! :D) to use a property (money or kind) allocated by an "author of the trust" towards an "objective" designed for benefit of an identified "beneficiary" 

Author of the trust: One who allocates a portion of his property for an identified purpose.

Trustee: Person/people that the author entrusts the property and the responsibility to carry out the identfied purpose

Beneficiary: Well..beneficiary of the purpose. The author of the trust and/or his family can be the beneficiary, but then the trust will not be a private trust (not a public charitable trust, which is the focus of the session)

Trust property: The property the author of the trust allocates for the purpose.

Objective: The identified purpose of the trust (poverty alleviation, health, education etc)

While registering a trust, the above five aspects should be mandatorily identified with the registrar. The should be non-religious and should not be directed only to a particular class or group of people (with the exception of groups like women, tribal people, handicapped or the like).

Society

A society is an association of people who subscribe to a common objective/goal. From the legal stand point, the main difference between a trust and a society is that the former needs to show the "property" while registering. But the society can own property. (Example Amul is a society!)

A few other differences:

Trusts: 

• Always have a fixed number of trustees (though not necessarily the same people)
  
• Trustees can't be beneficiaries, but can draw salary for services rendered by applying specific skill set. For example, a trustee who is a CA can draw salary for taking care of the trusts finances.
  
• Only one governing body.

Society: 

• Members can be added
• Members can be beneficiaries (as in area welfare associations)
• There is a govrening body that governs the society, but doesn't take part in policy-making and a general body that makes policy and to which the rest of the members belong.

The society is governed by the central government's sovietyes registration Act, drawn in 1860 (and hasn't changed till date!) and the state laws that differ with each states. The societies are governed by the law of the state that is mentioned address of the society's premises. If EBAI has a center in Delhi and Hyderabad, and changes its headquarters from Delhi to Hyderabad, EBAI can't file a tax return in Delhi showing the premises address in Delhi.

Section-25 company:

From the legal stand point an organization registering as a section-25 company should 

1. have a social objective 
   
2. be run as a non-profit company (can earn profits but should be used in full towards the social objective)

Unlike the archaic laws governing the registration and running of trusts and societies, laws governing a section-25 companies are rigourously updated, implemented and enforced. For example proposed name of the company is rigourously scrutinized by the registrar's office to ensure that it doesn't identify with or similar to another registered company. Further, the name must also should be desirable and not misleading. For example, a section-25 company not endorsed by chennai municipality cannot have a name that contains words "Chennai municipal".

A section-25 company, since it goes through such a rigorous registration process and conforms to a stringent accounting standards, are guaranteed to have better credibility with the public than a society or a trust.

Interactive exercise on NGOs:

We performed an interactive exercise to rehearse scenarios in which an individual has to decide if  has to register his organization as a society, trust or a company

Scenario 1: A doctor couple coming back to India desires to use their properties to setup a charitable cardiac hospital.

In this scenario, the doctor couple are technically sound, but do need a management team to run the hospital, since they have the initial capital and need to rise more money, they can register their hospital as a charitable trust. However, considering the need for the hospital to be run even after their departure and the need to maintain high standards in quality of services, they should strive to eventually progress and register as a section-25 company.

Scenario-2:  Women's self help group to pool up some credit and jointly improve livelihood through small business

This is a loose association of people with a common objective of improving livelihood, with no property. Here the members are the beneficiaries and membership is variable. Society!

Scenario - 3: An individual identifies talented, but poor group of artisans proposes to start a fabric business to employ their skills, export finished materials to international market and profits with them thus providing more returns for their talant.

This organization has a double bottom-line of social benefit and making profit to be invested in social benefit. Since it caters to international market, it also has the obligation of show high standards of accountability and transparency. Section-25 company.

2. Income Tax laws governing NGOs.

Numerous legal aspects governing the income tax reponsibilities for NGOs were covered. In general, 15% of the NGO's funds is exempt from income tax. The rest 85% should be used towards the administrative and the purpose of social objective. The memorandum and bye-laws that NGOs provide while registering the organization, are very crucial since the IT department carefully scrutinizes the utilization of funds for the purposes that are strictly mentioned in the memorandum. Laws covering the taxation of foreign contribution were also discussed. (though much of this went right above my head)!

(Note about the instructor will be posted shortly!)

SE-session 3: Innovations in social sector

Agenda:
Innovation:
1. Another perspective
2. Social sector
3. Examples
4. In class innovation
5. Prescription

The class began with the emphasis that Individuals can make a difference.
Before the discussion of the items on the agenda, we had a short discussion on plastics and its environmental impact in which professor Bhargava indicated (at least my perception) that recycling is not will not avoid or reduce environmental impact of non-recyclable materials.

1. Innovation: Another perspective

Answered the question "What is innovation?"

Discussed a scenario that forced innovation.

Scenario: A hotel with malfunctioning air-conditioner and an ineffective fan. The room is infested with mosquitoes. There is a 60-watt bulb. There is a mosquito mat, but no matches or any other source of fire. How to use the mat to find a solution to the mosquito-problem that lasts till morning.

Solution: One can use the 60-watt bulb as a source of heat. But it is too hot to be used directly and the mat won't last till morning. So, a one-rupee coin can be balanced on the bulb with the mosquito mat placed on top.

My inference: Innovation is a practical solution to solve a problem at hand using available resources, that need not be meant to address the problem at hand.

Innovation also the need to emphasize lateral-thinking. As an example of lateral-thinking we saw videos of ads by Coca-cola and Pepsi

2. Social Sector - Triple bottom-line
Social sector shares a lot of similarities with for-profit sectors. A list is as under

1. Hierarchy
2. Objective
3. Resource management
4. Quality
   
5. Ethics
6. Customer (beneficiary) satisfaction
7. Marketing
   

However, there is one difference. For-profit organizations have a single objective of making profits, while a social enterprise should have a tripple bottom-line of People Planet and Profit

3. Examples of innovation in Social sector:
Few examples in different categories of social sectors were discussed

Co-operative:
Amul, a mik co-operative, that mobilized individual milk-men to form a co-operative to find a way to get more returns. Karsan bhai also started a CSR initiative, by which the members of Amul invest a small portion of their earnings towards building health infrastructure.

Rural Employment

• SEWA
• Tilonia
• Lijjat Papad

Poverty alleviation

Grameen Bank's Micro loans initiative for the poorest

Attrition reduction
The instructor didn't name the company based in Bangalore, but highlighted the innovation for tackling the attrition problem. They identified that attrition becomes a problem only when timely replacements are not available. The company studied the background of those who leave the company and found that a majority is from Bihar. So, they targeted the exiting employees from Bihar and asked them to get one person from his village and train him/her thus taking care not only timely replacement but also overlapping the training time.

Others:
Big shoe bazaar
Shoes of size 11 or above don't sell much, hence aren't stocked by many of the showrooms. Bigshoebazaar.com connects the demand for big shoes to the supply (tie-ups will all the shoe companies) for which the latter provide a discount. This provides a winning situation for companies (big shoes are sold more), and customers (they find the shoe of their size with much less hassle!) while earning money out of it (a share in the discount!)

National Innovations Foundation: A compendium of rural innovations

4. In-class innovation
The instructor divided us into groups of two and asked us to identify a social problem, propose an innovative solution and identify the tangible benefits of the solution.

One group identified the lack of teaching talent in government school. To combat that problem, they proposed a teacher's training institute close to the locality of the school, channelize students who have completed 10th stds to the institute. That was voted the most innovative and effective idea of all the proposed ideas (for which the team got a large bar of chocolate).

5. Prescriptions
As a prescription for innovation in social sector, the instructor highlighted the importance of

• community involvement and promote self-reliance (exit strategy for the NGOs after providing solutions)...

While NGOs can provide a solution to problems, they
can't stay forever to maintain the solution, and that the beneficiaries
need to take ownership of the solutions. Being associated with Byrraju Foundation, he pointed efforts taken by the foundation in this direction

• Innovation for a purpose, than for the sake of innovation
  

He showed a  funny cartoon in which a student shows his work to a bewildered teacher. The quote runs like this. "My name was David, but the name is old-fashioned, so I shortened by name as DVD!"

So what is the take away from this session?  

When you hit upon an idea, do some research to find if anyone has hit upon the same idea and has gone a certain disatance. It gives an opportunity to learn the easier way and introduces a potential partner.

Be open to borrowing best-practices from the for-profit sector. For-profit is not necessarily against non-profit. Just the purpose is different. So there is a lot of scope for common interest.

Note about the Instructor:


Prof.Harsh Bhargava,

Harsh is an Engineering graduate from BITS, Pilani and M Tech from IIT, Kanpur besides MMS from Osmania University. For over three decades he was involved in institution building, outsourcing management and indigenous design, development and implementation of embedded real time systems in various capacities in Indian Navy. Widely traveled, Harsh is a keen environmentalist who gives his time for social causes. He has edited 7 books in the areas of Business Process Outsourcing, Rural Transformation, NGOs and Virtual Leadership.

Harsh is currently a Professor at The ICFAI Business School, Hyderabad and has also served with Byrraju Foundation.

First serious stab at Social Entrepreneurship

I have joined a certification course in Social Entrepreneurship in an "NGO B-school" called Centre for Social Initiative and Management. The center is run as a non-profit initiative to attract professionals into non-profit so that a social problem can be solved permanently with "problem-solving" mentality rather than temporarily "philanthropic" mentality. The course lasts for 18 sessions which include classroom discussion, home works, case study, field project to find a solution to social problem partnership with one of 30 NGOs. The best part is it costs not in lakhs, or tens of thousands, but a mere Rs. 5000. and you get a copy of "How to change the world". How is that?

Talking about philanthropy and non-profit, it only makes sense to share the spoils with everybody. Free of cost. In this series of post, I will go through the proceedings of each session so that it helps socially inclined readers (if there are any) with some ideas or inspire them to take up this course, or just with plain boredom! :)

Today's session saw an introduction to two broad topics
1. Social Entrepreneurship and its criteria
2. Leadership

1.Social Entrepreneurship
We watched an hour-long video on Aravind Eye hospital and Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy and discussed his and the hospitals characteristics with relevance to social entrepreneurship. We identified

• Human welfare as priority
• Targeted social vision and area of intervention (Eye care)
• Sustainability (those who pay for care, also cover cost of treating the poor)
• Innovation (Indeginous low-cost lens production facility)
• Partnership with government, poor people, other non-profits and for-profit businesses

Also discussed about various know social entrepreneurs like Vikram Akula (SKS microfinance), M.S.Swaminathan (Green revolution in India) and identified keen social acumen, leadership, aspiration, social impact, and ethics like abiding by the law as criteria for social entrepreneurship.

2. Leadership
This topic was handled by a retired officer of The Indian Army and he had a lot of anecdotes from the his life in the Army training camp, Siachin glacier and Srinagar. He discussed about different shades of leadership starting from an autocratic leader at one extreme and a laissez-faire leader at the other of which Servant Leadership would be the most suitable for a social entrepreneur.

Further we discussed several characteristics that differentiate a leader and a manager. In short, there were too take-aways as per my understanding.

1. A manager implements an already identified solution using a known way. A leader finds a solution to a problem and implements it in an innovative way, if need be.
2. Management is a sub-set of leadership
   

We also discussed briefly about Leaadership Pipeline, a concept introduced to address the dearth of indigineous leadership in companies. Apart from the book recommended (as given in the link) for this quite a few other books and website were recommended. Here is a list.

Books:
Leading from the edge: By N.T. Perkins
Shackleton's way: Margot Morrell and Stafanie Capparell

Websites:
www.socialedge.org
www.ashoka.org
www.changemakers.net
www.basicsindia.com

My overall, my first impression is very good. I mainly like the variety and the enthusiasm in the class which is about 15 strong. Though the majority are software engineers, it is also represented by people from educational field of which one is a school principal, two chemical scientists (and professors) and one foreigner (His name is Tahir, and I think he is an African!).

The faculty so far seem to be very knowledgeable and experienced. Prof. K.L Srivastava, the director of the center, had been a scientist in ICRISAT specialising in water management for agricultural irrigation and has been active in social forums like Social Edge.

However, there could be some improvement in the presentation of the lecture
1. Powerpoint was used through out the lecture, but a lot of the lecture was read out of the slides. This was followed up by elaborate discussions which brought out the expertise of the lecturer, but the "reading out" part took the interest out of the lecture.

2. Such course should encourage classroom discussions at every opportunity available. Though fair amount of classroom discussion did take place, there were also instances in which a student added a point to the slide, but the lecturer seemed to have moved on to his next point without addressing his point. This should be changed.

Finally, I felt that I have already recovered my Rs. 5000/- and it is just the first class. Very good start.