Titled “Global Shades of Development” the photo contest is open to anyone in the world with an interest in taking and submitting photos on microfinance, social enterprise or other related subjects. The awards are as follows: The winning photos will be displayed at Zenzi in Bandra, Mumbai, India, followed by a three-week long exhibition. The [...]

IndiaKhelo is seeking to build a national measurement of kid’s performance in sports (similar to the centralized board exams), hold events across the country to unearth talent (like the national academic talent searches) and in general inspire a lot more people to take sports as seriously as classes.I recently caught up with Varun Gupta, one [...]

The most common ideas in social entrepreneurship tend to focus on fields like micro-finance, rural livelihood and healthcare. Today we focus on a completely different and often ignored breed of innovators – those leading the change through sports. There are a diverse set of projects ranging from NGOs to for-profit social enterprises that are looking at [...]

Despite adding over 10 million subscribers a month, India has a low mobile penetration of 13%. Telecom giant Nokia recently launched a number of exciting new tools aimed at capturing the next segment of growth in the mobile industry – rural India. Launched under the Life Tools product umbrella, the services include, Nokia Life Tools [...]

Barefootjobs.org is India’s first interactive job portal for social, environmental, CSR and sustainability sectors. Launched by Third Sector Partners, a global boutique executive search firm for top management, CXO and Board positions in these sectors, Barefootjobs.org would aim to fulfill the need for quality professionals at the grass roots level. Designed as a fast and [...]

Started by Ethos Philanthropy, I-Support Fellowships is looking for professionals to help NGOs and social enterprises solve urgent organizational challenges. The professionals will use their domain expertise to help organizations address issues of scalability and sustainability. The professional will engage with the organization on a part-time basis and will commit a minimum of 5 hours [...]

Acumen Fund, a non-profit that is aiming to develop and scale business models in the developing world, recently announced their fellows for 2010. Among these four of the ten selected will be working in India. Interestingly none of the awardees are from India, despite it being one of the primary regions for Acumen’s work. The [...]

I have been going through the free supplement of India Today magazine called Aspire (IT-Aspire)  and two courses relevant to young social entrepreneurs caught my eye. PGDM-D&SF, IFMR, Chennai For fresh graduates with  any Bachelor’s degree who are willing to start off in the social sector, Institute of Financial Management and Research (IFMR), Chennai offers [...]

Grama Vidiyal Micro Finance (GVMF) is about to enter into a phase of significant expansion. According to its Chairman S Devaraj, the organization will “add 61 branches which would take up total number of branches to 215 from the current 154. Currently, the 25-year old NBFC caters to 4 lakh people and set a target [...]

Chilkur Balaji temple, more famous among the residents of  Hyderabad (if not among the larger Indian community) as the “Visa temple”  because it is believed to aid those who have applied for US Visa, has adopted a “say-no-to-plastic” policy. Known earlier for doing away with “Hundi” (a box where devoutees contribute to the temple) and [...]