CSIM Bangalore Alumni
Ashwin Krishna is an engineer from Mysore University currently working with Juniper Networks. He is a co-founder of ‘Vayam Sadaiv’, a volunteer group comprising professionals and students. For the past few years they have been empowering an NGO named Divya Deepa which is working with the rural primary education sector. His project entitled ‘Parivarthana’ looks to promote self-sustainable villages in India. For the CSIM project, after exhaustive on-field studies and interviews with practising social entrepreneurs, Ashwin laid out a complete blue-print for rural development encompassing such issues as provision of basic amenities, renewable energy, promoting self-employment and establishing community harmony.
Bharathi Ramprasad is a very active volunteer with organizations like Kathalaya and Sunshine School for Autism. Her own organization, Aachaman’s objective is to provide children in the juvenile justice system access to a better quality of life, education and to rehabilitate and integrate them successfully into society. Her focus will be on augmenting education programmes, counselling and psychological intervention, improvement of health and hygiene and restoration of children to their families. She hopes to attain her objectives through vocational training, rehab and referrals, sports and extra-curricular activities, and secure the involvement of the community in all of this.
Deepak Menon is an Instrumentation engineer and an MBA. He has recently made the transition from Oracle Software to an environmental NGO named Arghyam. For his project he has presented a thematic case for social outsourcing so as to optimize the effectiveness and efficiencies of the social venture. According to him, NGOs can outsource services like fund development, accounting, skills training to professionals while they concentrate on their core competencies. Deepak is looking at a model of a non-profit company to take up these tasks and has worked out a detailed strategy to offer affordable services to NGOs while keeping his own sustained.
Shivalingappa Mahagaonkar is the Vice President of Shivarudra Trust which provides services to senior citizens in Gulbarga district. In collaboration with the Department of Welfare of Senior Citizens and the Disabled, and the local police, Shivalingappa’s Trust has formulated a grievances redress methodology and implements the same. Through the years Shivarudra Trust has directly impacted the lives of 5000 senior citizens and helped to settle legal claims to the tune of 1.5 crores. As part of his CSIM project, Sri Shivalingappa evaluated the already existing schemes and has come up with recommendations and suggestions in the light of the current social scenario of neglect and exploitation of senior citizens.
Vijayanand Nagaraj, a software quality engineer at Sasken Communications, actually coined a term ‘volunteerising’ to emphasize the important role that volunteers have to play in the development sector. He is convinced that apart from intangible benefits to the volunteers themselves, volunteerism has vital economic and social benefits which help to build stable communities. He suggests that NGOs should factor in the contributions of volunteers at the resource planning stage by identifying their base competencies and categorizing them as specialist volunteers like doctors, counselors, technology volunteers, financial, administrative volunteers and ‘floating’ volunteers who can be entrusted with one-time jobs. As a very involved and committed volunteer himself, Vijayanand is helping NGOs put his ideas into practice.
Gowri Kumar’s passion lies with pets, particularly dogs. Her project, termed Buddies, will provide Animal Assisted Activities. (AAT) using “Therapets” such as dogs, rabbits, and fish initially. Other kinds of Therapets will be introduced later on. Her clientele will consist of geriatric patients and terminally ill individuals.As part of her project she has done an exhaustive study of pet therapy and is now in the process of validating her findings and setting up her pilot project. Sri N.B. Jayaprakash needs no introduction to those in the know of development issues in Bangalore. Within a period of a year and a half, Mr Jayaprakash has set up the Bangalore and Mysore chapters of the Dignity Foundation and has opened up two additional satellite centres in Bangalore. The membership within this period has increased from 100 to 1200 and it is no wonder that he is the first ever recipient for the Excellence Award presented by Dignity Foundation and ICICI Prudential. In the midst of all this, he has found the time to think through his project for CSIM termed Parihaar, which deals with another passion area – the welfare of widows and divorcees.
Dr Usha Vasthare, originally from Bangalore, has been living in the USA for the past 26 years. She has served as Assistant Professor in the Department of Physiology and Neurosurgery at Temple University School of Medicine. In 2004, Dr. Vasthare decided to take early retirement so that she could devote her life to service. In 2006, she teamed up with her daughter to offer rehabilitative services to stroke patients and caregivers in Bangalore. This served as a six month pilot study that evolved into what is now YogaKshema Rehabilitation and Wellness Center. She joined CSIM to explore how the concept of social entrepreneurship could help her to ensure long-term sustainability for her project.
Asim Siddiqui, an engineer from IIT, Delhi, formerly with Verse Innovations and now working with Janaagraha, and Manish Saraswat, an executive engineer at Yokogawa India Ltd., have thought of a project termed Bhagidaari to promote the spirit of Single cause and directed solutions by gathering money from various CSR funds and channelizing it towards causes in a streamlined manner. They plan to bring together various NGOs working for the same cause to develop a master plan where each has a unique role to play. They will facilitate this by means of a CSR resource pool and monitored NGO performance.
Smita Guha Roy wished to address two issues: a) generating employment in rural women and b) finding an economically viable alternative to plastic. She managed to combine both objectives by training rural women to stitch environment friendly cloth bags. After doing the needs assessment and the feasibility study, she has set up the infrastructure in the village, sourced the raw material, researched the best designs, trained the women, found a market for the products and is now ensuring self-sustainability of the programme. All her efforts are being documented into a manual which will facilitate propagation of the idea.
