It’s that time of the year again, when hundreds of social entrepreneurs, development professionals, corporate executives, consultants, policy makers, researchers and students come together at Oxford University’s Said Business School, to discuss some of the world’s most critical social problems and try to find solutions to them through Social Entrepreneurship. The Skoll World Forum 2008 takes place this week and I am disappointed that, for several reasons, I won’t be there. However, I will be keenly following the event, through ‘edgy’ blog posts and updates from our pseudo-undercover journalist, Global X ;-).

This year, the Forum will focus on the theme of ‘Social Entrepreneurship: culture, context and social change’ and aims to examine the role of cultural and contextual issues in the social change process. Sounds exciting, isn’t it? The impressive line-up of discussions and accomplished individuals – check out the Forum’s agenda – is as exciting as the theme itself. Here are a few sessions that I would have personally loved to attend at the Forum this year:

1.      The opening plenary session, which will be addressed by Jeff Skoll, Stephan Chambers, Nobel laureate Jody Williams and a few other distinguished individuals.

2.      The session named ‘Empathy and Ethics: Drivers of our Shifting Culture’, which includes Ashoka CEO Bill Drayton as one of the speakers.

3.      The session named ‘The Internet, Mobile Technology and Cross-cultural Communication’, which has speakers such as our very own ‘edgy’ Victor and Kiva’s Premal Shah.

4.      The Evergreen session on ‘Hybrid and For-profit models’ would have been especially interesting to me, since I believe that these models are the way forward for social enterprises.

5.      The Evergreen sessions on ‘Mirror, Mirror on the Wall, What’s the Impact of this All’ and ‘Effective Models for Partnership’ seem to be interesting too. The second session has SustainAbility’s John Elkington (I am eagerly awaiting his book, ‘The Power of Unreasonable People’, to be released in India) as one of the speakers.

It would have been interesting to attend one of the ‘Consulting Clinics’ too. And of course, the Closing Plenary session, which will be addressed by Al Gore and Acumen Fund’s Jacqueline Novogratz, is not to be missed.

It would have been exciting to personally meet several people whom I know only through e-mail interactions. But then, given the optimist that I am, I am sure I will be able to make it to the Forum next year. All of you attending the Forum this year do write to me about your experiences!  

A few weeks ago, Nitin Rao, a friend and a fellow Bangalorean, contacted me to inform about the launch of ‘Engineers for Social Impact’ (E4SI), a unique fellowship program which intends to connect talented Engineering students from some of the best Engineering schools in India with for-profit social enterprises. I should have posted about E4SI a couple of weeks earlier since the application deadline for this program was 2^nd March 2008. Nevertheless, E4SI is an exciting program and I am sure many of you would be interested in reading about it.

Every year, more than 400,000 Engineers graduate from about 3500 Engineering schools in India. However, many of them tend to take up jobs in traditional sectors such as IT and Manufacturing and very few of them are aware of the exciting opportunities that are emerging in the social enterprise sector. E4SI, launched by a group of enthusiastic youngsters led by Nitin, is aimed at addressing the problem of talent crunch among for-profit social enterprises in India. The program is also aimed at providing hands-on social enterprise work experience for current engineering students and it creates awareness of emerging opportunities in the development sector.

E4SI is a highly selective program which accepted applications only from students of a selected group of top Engineering schools (five IITs – Delhi, Bombay, Madras, Kanpur and Kharagpur, three NITs – Surathkal, Warangal and Trichy, BITS Pilani and NSIT Delhi) this year. Five fellows will be selected out of the applicants and they will be placed in partner for-profit social enterprises – Vaatsalya Healthcare, SELCO, Ujjivan, Intellecap and iDiscoveri – for internships. The program boasts of a group of accomplished advisers and the selection process will be conducted by a panel of experts with degrees from London School of Economics, MIT, Yale and Michigan.

Nitin, who himself interned with a for-profit education start-up last summer, is yet to graduate from his Engineering program at NIT Surathkal but has already accomplished a lot in the social enterprise sector (check out his amazing profile). I wish him and his team the very best for this initiative.

I know that I haven’t been fair to the blogger in me over the past couple of months. Work hasn’t been kind to me of late and several other activities, though exciting, have kept me busy. I will soon write about these activities in this space. Keep watching!

Anyway, I was at the Fireflies Festival of Sacred Music here in Bangalore last weekend, along with my friends. The dusk-till-dawn festival, into its fifth year now, showcased a wide range of musical talent from India and abroad. Performances at this year’s festival included a folk dance called Puje Kunitha (Worship Dance), Bengali fakiri songs, Indian fusion music from bands such as Esperanto and Swarathma, popular Qawali numbers, Jazz and many more. The festival, which showcased Indian and Western art to an urban crowd (a few Western music lovers were also present), reminded me of a blog topic that I had thought about sometime ago – Rural Tourism.

Tourism in India has been growing at a steady pace over the past few years and every year, thousands of foreign tourists throng India’s tourist destinations to experience ‘Exotic India’. The elegantly done ‘Incredible India’ campaign by the Indian Government’s Tourism Ministry has been successful in attracting more tourists to India. However, Western tourists to India typically visit popular destinations such as Agra (Taj Mahal), Khajuraho, Mysore, Goa, Udaipur etc and the big cities. All these destinations have become quite expensive these days and many of them are not very well maintained. A better way to experience the culture and heritage of India is to visit its rural heartland. The Tourism Ministry realized this and hence, launched the ‘Explore Rural India’ campaign a couple of years ago, in association with UNDP India. The initiative showcases a few selected villages in different states of India, which offer a wholesome village experience, complete with home-stays and cultural shows. In addition to providing a new dimension to Indian tourism, this initiative intends to bring about inclusive tourism and bring economic benefits to rural India.

Of course, rural tourism initiatives will have to try hard to convince a hygiene-conscious Western (and urban Indian) tourist to visit rural India. And there is also the danger of environmental degradation of rural India from tourism. However, ‘ecotourism’ is increasingly becoming popular and several attractive rural tourism packages are being offered nowadays (I have heard about a low-cost rural tourism initiative near Bangalore, which I intend to try out soon). I hope to see many more such initiatives becoming popular in the near future.