The Strategic Partnerships Between Multinational Corporations and Social Entrepreneurs used the metaphor “dancing with elephants” as the overarching theme for discussion. SustainAbility’ s Maggie Brenneke also described the concept of “intrapreneurs,” which are individuals within established companies thinking and acting entrepreneurially.  While somewhat obvious, the panel primarily focused on the importance of maintaining relationships between [...]

For your reading pleasure: Government and Inflation: After meeting with the Cabinet Committee on Prices, PM Manmohan Singh announced a multitude of measures to rein in inflation. In related news, rising prices could deal a significant blow to the US-India nuclear agreement due to the potential for political fallout. Microfinance: VC Circle reports that Lok [...]

Today, Microcapital.org published the second part of their “Pioneers in Microfinance” series, in which they continued their interview of a pioneer in microfinance, Aloysius P. Fernandez, Executive Director MYRADA and Chairman of the Board of Microfinance Institution Sanghamithra Rural Financial Services.   To refresh your memory on Part One of this series, read this earlier post by Vinay. [...]

Recently, we interviewed Nitin Gupta, co-founder of NGO Post, about the vision and mission of their site, including plans for expansion in the future.  Please find a summary of the interview below:  About NGO Post: Nitin Gupta and Parul Gupta’s passion lies in building connections between NGOs around the world.  Their method, however, is an [...]

Starting April 1st, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which provides at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment to every household whose adult members volunteer to work on labour-intensive public works annually, will be implemented in all 604 districts across India.  Unfortunately, though the program looks good on paper, even its most vociferous proponents will admit [...]

Impact assessment, performance metrics, social impact – these terms are gaining increasing traction in the social entrepreneurship sector, specifically in the context of sustainability and effectiveness.  In the session entitled, “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, What’s the IMPACT of This All?”, covered by the Acumen Fund blog, panelists discussed the purpose of impact assessment, asking [...]

Oneworld South Asia highlights that India’s strategy to combat Multi Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) might be failing to stop the spread of the disease. There are 2.2 million new cases of TB every year. The CGAP Microfinance Technology Blog picked up a story from Business Standard on Andhra Pradesh government’s plan to provide rural pensions [...]

At the recent Skoll World Forum, the Berkeley Bottom Line bloggers covered Dr. Paul Farmer‘s speech following the Replication and Scale session. Diverging from discussions of business models and financial feasibility, Farmer offered a human touch to the idea of social entrepreneurship and scale. They quote from his speech:

Water and environment: Cross-state water supply link will not be stopped by political maneuvering, says CM. Moving to Varanasi, the National Water Conference is underway. Finally, in protest to the company’s water usage and other environmental abuses, a UP community shuts down Coca-Cola Plant. Research: First government funded stem cell research center established in Tamil [...]

In the Innovation and Change in Government Culture workshop, one of the major themes was which problems or issues should government address and which should they ignore or stay away from. This is a very important concern, especially since much of the impetus for social entrepreneurship comes from those areas where the public sector is [...]