Guest Lecture

Prof.M.S.Venugopal started his session by asking the fellows to decode themselves from past experiences & learned concepts. Prof. Venugopal made groups & asked fellows to come out with an idea that has novelty, distinctness, utility and inventabiity. He also asked each fellow to identify a name that they liked to be called. Fellows said that they want to be called as Mother Teresa, Subhas Chandra Bose, Veer Savarkar, Rani Chennamma etc. Prof said that we should not be fascinated and emotion with regard to achievement of some others.  He said that all of us want to live a birth which has been popular, experimental and lived.  We want to recreate old miseries. We want to hunger to exist. Overcome hunger and misery. Think of a new idea of novelty by decoding ourselves.  Identify some character of human which is innovative and novel. Don’t try to relive the values of other persons. They have been experimented lived. Some new vision of man is vital in the course of living. Strength of humanity is reduced by profit motivation. Service makes people parasites, beggars & does not eradicate poverty. It does not build the strength of others. Social Entrepreneurs are interested in discovering something new apart from profit and service motive.  He wants to create independency of all kinds & empower people. Pepsi does not want to empower the people. Want to cultivate dependency. Every person is interested in our weakness, dependency. Social entrepreneurship creates strength, capabilities & independency. Social Entrepreneurship means creating not mere society but civil society.

Entrepreneurship is motivated by spirit of creativity, novelty. Something distinct alone solves problem. Having ideas is important. Thinking of feasibility, possibility makes lethargy.

Development concept is not to bring material comfort to those people who already have. Real development has to have the idea of involving of whole community. Evolve and involve. Not segregate, not disintegration.

Work for pleasure and happiness. While in the process of working, innovate and involve. We should have the attitude of the mother- she gives everything for the sake of child without expecting. There is a pleasure in giving pleasure. The idea of social entrepreneurship is to utilize our capacity for the sake of society & bring more and more circle of pleasure and capabilities.

We should come out false perception of service. Social entrepreneurship of bringing development is not to create gap, not to destroy the capacity of culture but to create and originate. Idea is not to commercialize but to socialize. Not to earn profit but to build the capacities. Not to create but to bridge the gap.

Mostly our ideas and development are unrealistic, and do not observe basic things. Without observation we try to impose our ego, perception with regard to development. We follow doctrine approach to development.

Business depends upon the weakness and wants of the people. Avoid dependency concepts. Build ideas, independent and freedom. Social entrepreneurship is liberating fellows of human being. We want to empower, build society & give skills.

Overcome inhibitions & false notions that act as great impediment to development. Build your capacities by building capacities of others. Development is not to impose, it is participatory and mutual. We should have courage, opposition and not taken by concepts that played a vital role in hindering the development.

Until we mix with common people, we cannot understand the life. Life in ivory tower is not fruitful to the society. We should pinch of life as is and understand the significance of life.

Earlier society is based on kinship, relationship and affinity. New society should be based on relation of interest. That is development.  Build a relation beyond our emotion and body. We should be pioneers of the development. We should create the purpose of interest. We should rise above physical aspects.

Development means being physically & mentally active. Keep body & mind intact. Decode yourself from doctrines, opinions, judgments. Go beyond physical development. Understand the capacity beyond physical level.

Prof said that Business Entrepreneurship faces competition whereas Social Entrepreneurship faces criticism.

            The entire session was based on activity which utilized all the five senses of the body. Prof.Venugopal brought out his concepts through games & songs. Fellows were motivated by his energy level & the way he analyzed the dimensions of Social entrepreneurship. He started & concluded the session sharply within the time allotted.

Khadi Day

Deshpande fellows organized sale of Khadi dress on 23^th, 24^th & 25^th October 2008 at BVB Engineering college, Vidyanagar, Hubli and celebrated Khadi Day on25th, October 2008 by wearing Khadi dresses.

Two Khadi dealers from Hubli & Dharwad displayed their products for three days. A total sale of Rs.20,025 was made during these days. On an average each khadi dealer made sales of Rs.3000 and above. Students, staffs & employees of the BVB College showed keen interest towards khadi products.

More than 350 people visited the stalls. People wanted to buy more khadi dresses if dealers had brought more variety of khadi products. Lack of aggressive selling by dealers was a major factor that obstructed khadi from reaching its potential.

Major learning we got from this activity was that Khadi has a huge potential to grow, if we market it aggressively by taking khadi products into customers doorsteps with varieties and not sitting in one centralized place looking forward customers to come.

By seeing the enthusiasm and response we got by the people towards Khadi, we decided to celebrate every Saturday as Khadi day.

Cheers Khadi,

Right to Information(RTI)

We conducted a session on RTI for Master of Social work students. We explained the concepts, meaning, its role & how they can use it.

Finally, we have conducted a practical orientation for participants to learn how to write an application under RTI Act 2005. We divided students into five groups, each group with three members. Each fellow managed and guided each team, telling groups they could give the application on Monday to public a authority. We offered help you to this practical assignment. We have collected individual feedback from them. Everyone feels better about session and gave positive feedback that after this session they understand the RTI Act 2005.   

Enviornmental Education

1.       Cleaniness drive at church campus with Students: We interacted with the students and provided them the environmental education. Later we spend around three hours with students and cleaned the entire campus of the church. We also constructed the compost pit at the camp which converts biodegradable waste into manure. We separated different type of solid wastes.

 

The learning I got from this activity is that I was able to discover my strength. All the team members told that we did not know that you have good Motivational & teaching capacity. We will come to know our strength & weakness only when we do the activity.

 

 

Teaching to Child Labour

1.       I always felt bad when I saw children in the age group working in BVB campus canteen, where we used to have breakfast & Lunch. I seriously taught about the action plan that I can do so there is a change in their life & my life also. Daily Preethi & I spend about an hour from 8p.m to 9p.m after their canteen hours. The number of children increased to five but there was irregularity in Coming. One boy came regularly inspite of so many external problems. We are building a team so that we can teach the children of construction labours by visiting at their site, where they live. I learning I got is that there will be lot of challenges when we intiate an activity & we should have passion & perseverance to continue the activity inspite of challenges.

Impact Study

Impact study module helped us to apply our knowledge & skills in real life projects. Words such as Participation, evaluation, quality performance that we learned in the classroom got a different dimension during the impact study. We understood the mistakes that we make while implementing development projects. The challenges that we have to faced while implementing the development projects & the strategies that we should adopt was clearly understood.

Fund Raising

We undertook a fund raising activity for Bihar Relief Fund.

We are five members in the team. We decided to go Railway Station so that we get a lot of individual people to donate. We spend for three hours and we were able to collect around 800 rupees. We observed that lot of individual contributed but the amount was in one, two, five & maximum ten rupees.

Then we decided to go with trader’s shops hoping that money contributed will be relatively large. We were disappointed since large number of traders refused to give money but we were able to collect 200 rupees with four to five traders contributing.

Once it was made as a performance based activity & not as a learning activity we decided to think our strategies seriously. We broke out into two teams and each team concentrated in two different areas.

One team on big Institutions such as banks, Insurance, brokers, Reality developers & commercial establishments. We got a good response & were able to collect 1000 rupees within three hours. Some of the institutions asked time of one to two days. The other team concentrated on Industrial area. 2000 rupees was collected with four to five contributors although most of them refused to contribute.

We came to know that we should concentrate both on places like Railway Station & also big institutions. Railway station provided a guaranteed source of contribution & big institutions does not provide a guaranteed source but had a high value of contribution.

Right to Information

The understanding we had about RTI was brodened by this module. We got a new approach of using RTI. Sue-motto, Catalogue, & Index were some of the sections of RTI we learnt newly. We learnt that RTI can be a win-win situation for government, individual & society if we use it effectively. We can create  good systems using RTI as a tool.

We also filed different RTI in different government offices & experienced the reactions by them. The video about the struggling to bring RTI by grassroot organizations of Rajasthan was interesting.

Eco-Tourism

We understood the importance of conservation through experience. Eco-tourism included heritage & cultural tourism also. We had swimming, paddling, & trekking. We made tents, stayed in island and had campfires. We understood how we can do o.ur activity by having minimum impact on the environment.

The trekking activity tested our courage & perservance. We also learned the descipline & co-ordination among the members. We stayed in houses interior to the forest. We learned how we should be sensitive & respect local culture. we visited the keladi fort , which made us to feel proud of our nation. There water conservation practises, Strategic Magagement & Leadership styles amazed everyone.

The historial temples build during the Keladi empire was also amazing. The insights it gave us through its arhitectural marvels was really great. We also witnessed cultural tourism through storry tellers. It was a great experiential learning for us.

Deshpande Foundation Fellowship in NW Karnataka

The Deshpande Foundation is a Boston based philanthropic foundation focused on Innovation, Entrepreneurship and International Development. They recently launched three unique fellowship opportunities, where fellows can get grassroots experience working in Northwest region of Karnataka

• Sandbox Fellow: This is a year-long program for young professionals or post-graduate school candidates who seek an extended experience working in on-the-ground development and/or social entrepreneurship.
• Innovation Fellow: This is a shorter term opportunity (up to six months) for an entrepreneur who would like to test a product or idea in a development lab setting.
• Junior Fellow: This short term (three to six months) opportunity is designed for mid-degree graduate students or experienced undergraduates who want to make an impact through field experience