Here are some headlines from around the wire: Female condom for Rs 5 in India New IITs to teach humanities too Norms for starting engineering colleges for girls eased ‘Let old Hyderabad, Bangalore airports function’ Number of engineers in India inflated, says study

Teaming up with the Knight Foundation, Ashoka announced that they will award fellowships to 30 social entrepreneurs over the next three years aimed at changing the way journalism works throughout the world. These Fellows will receive three-year stipends allowing them to focus full-time on their efforts to provide lasting, visible, systemic change in the way [...]

Microcapital.org yesterday profiled Aloysius P. Fernandez, and his organization Mysore Resettlement and Development Agency (MYRADA). MYRADA “provides training programs for rural development in the Indian states of Karnataka, Andhrapradesh, and Tamil Nadu as well as staff support to 6 other states and promotion of the Self-help Affinity Strategy in Cambodia, Bangladesh, and Myanmar.” One of [...]

From Microcapital.org: The 2008 Financial Times Sustainable Banking Awards has extended their submission deadline to March 10. The awards will be presented in London on June 3, 2008 following the 2008 FT/IFC Sustainable Banking Conference. Previously, the FT and IFC Sustainable Banking Awards had focused solely on banking institutions. This year, in hopes of recognizing [...]

In an interview promoting his new book, India Arriving, Rafiq Dossani (former editor of Business India weekly) said that he sees the next Google coming from not Bangalore or even the developed world, but rather a small town in India. Now, if you ask whether someone else might do that in India, and who that [...]

Here are some headlines for the day: Bhopal gas victims march to Delhi Google India launches Internet safety program US confident that N-deal will be completed UN Makes Its Statistical Data Free and Searchable

This was my second year at the Harvard Social Enterprise Conference – an annual gathering of the social enterprise enthusiasts from the US and around the world. The conference is jointly hosted by the Harvard Business School and the Kennedy School of Government. Below are some highlights (with a slight bias towards India!) India in [...]

Brian Trelstad on The Acumen Fund’s blog posted an article going through how this fund is trying to establish criteria for the valuation of social ventures. The article highlights many of the difficulties that the fund faces when trying to create an entirely new investing model yet still remain sustainable financially. Venture investing, as our [...]

The competition’s focus is Sustainable Agriculture for Development. This was brought to our attention by PSD Blog. Here is the information provided on the competition’s website: Applications are accepted through March 21, 2008 and will undergo rigorous review by more than 200 development experts. About 100 finalists will be announced in June and will be [...]

Here are links to articles addressing a variety of issues. All are from OneWorld South Asia: Half the world’s population will live in cities by the end of 2008 Government schemes not reaching the disabled Avian influenza: Good job India, says FAO 9% for health and education still a distant dream