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Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, in association with Tata Group, has planned to popularise social entrepreneurship model among the companies for utilisation in their CSR initiatives.
IIM-C and Tata Group have jointly been holding a yearly competition for social entrepreneurs since 2012. Professor Ashok Banerjee, Dean (New Initiatives and External relations) of IIM-C, told Business Line that the joint efforts now were being directed also to increasing awareness regarding social entrepreneurship. A campaign to encourage students and youth to spawn social enterprises has also been launched.
“We have expanded the scope and reach of Tata Social Entrepreneurship Challenge (TSEC) to include three more elements – conducting seminars, round tables and a revamped TSEC website to create a repository of all information on social entrepreneurship in India. In future, all the activities of TSEC will be held under the umbrella of IIM Calcutta Innovation Park - the newly formed incubator at IIM-C,” Banerjee said.
“We have launched a nation-wide awareness campaign -- ‘Thinking Social’ targeting today’s youth. These awareness building seminars are aimed towards students and budding social entrepreneurs. Four seminars will be held in a year- one in each region in a tier II city. The first such Seminar took place on 1 November at IIT Guwahati.
The round table series to establish linkage between CSR and social enterprises are to be organised in metros. It would kick off in the Capital shortly.
IIM-C also planned to provide its professional expertise in CSR delivery, reporting and monitoring for the companies.
“A corporate entity needs specialised expertise to run sustainable CSR activities. The mandatory provisions for profit-making entities would require establishing credible reporting system for a verifiable programme delivery,” he explained.
IIM-C, which has incubation centre for social entrepreneurs, would take responsibility of monitoring, review and certification for the social entrepreneurs, who would work for the companies on CSR assignments.
Meanwhile, TSEC has invited detailed business plan for its 2014-15 edition from early-stage (not older than three years) social enterprises or people with actionable ideas in the areas of agriculture, food, dairy, healthcare, water, sanitation, technology development, education, housing, handicraft, energy, micro finance and financial inclusion.
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