Teach for India (TFI) is a program that places young professionals and graduates within India’s low income schools for 2 years. A spin-off of the Teach for America program, TFI has a phenomenally successful first year in 2009. The first batch consisted of fellows from top colleges and corporate jobs in India and abroad. Applications [...]

78,000 mothers die giving birth in the country every year, and a million babies die within their first month of life. Many of these deaths can be prevented with the most basic of care and precautions, the lack of which is a widespread and pressing issue. Yet, in a country where a large proportion of [...]

Earlier this month, the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) announced a National Biomass Cookstove initiative which will provide efficient cooking stoves to rural areas.  According to the MNRE press release, 80% of residential energy in India comes from biomass (with 826 million users), which has adverse environmental and health effects, especially on women and children.  [...]

Rahul Brahmbhatt is contributing writer to Think Sport. The U.S Department of State has grants to use sport on an international cultural exchange program. Robert Baker and Craig Esherick, two faculty members from George Mason University in partnership with  JDBasketball, a basketball school seeks to “… take the best practices of basketball leadership in the [...]

Villgro (formerly known as Rural Innovations Network) is hosting the “UNCONVENTION - Where Path Breakers Meet Path Makers” in Chennai on December 10-12, 2009.  As we wrote about before, a business plan competition called Wantrapreneur was held to select finalists, who will present one final time before the awards are announced. Besides the business plan competition and awards, the [...]

Source for Change (SFC) is an all-women rural Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) company based in Bagar, Rajasthan empowering women with employment opportunities and providing quality dedication and best practices to the BPO industry.  SFC aims to present rural women a platform to be financially independent and to achieve greater social standing. SFC is currently looking [...]

The Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship recently recognized three individuals with significant impact in India as Social Entrepreneurs of the year for 2009. This was the fifth annual addition of these awards and was held in collaboration with the UN Development Program and CII. The first winner of this award is Rajendra Joshi of Saath, who has been working since [...]

ICICI Foundation in association with IFMR, iVolunteer, CSO Partners announces ICICI Fellows – a two-year social leadership programme, aimed at nurturing social leaders who “envision a future, mobilise people, thoughts and resources to create a brand new India“. It’s a 2 year intensive, experiential learning programme that will equip you to take on any professional [...]

Ajaita Shah is the Founder of Frontier Markets. She has 4 years of microfinance experience as a Credit Plus Manager at Ujjivan Financial Services, and Director for Swayam Krishi Sangam (SKS). She has consulted with the Social Performance Task Force through CGAP and Ford Foundation about microfinance in South Asia. Ajaita holds her B.A. in International Relations [...]

With Shital and Prerna being on board since the beginning, TC-I has always been sensitive to how being a woman can create additional hurdles for social entrepreneurs. In the most recent Beyond Profit e-newsletter, Praseeda Kunam sits down via a podcast to discuss these challenges in addition to other subjects. To listen to her opinions and [...]