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.

What is common to all these men and women? They are all successful Micro Entrepreneurs who built sustainable businesses using micro-credit and are also recipients of the 2007 Micro Entrepreneurs Awards presented by Citibank’s Citi Foundation in collaboration with a Delhi-based NGO named Partners in Change. A ceremony to honour the 2007 awardees was held in Mumbai recently.

Since its inception in 2004, the Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program has recognized and awarded several entrepreneurial talents at the base of the pyramid. This year, 11 worthy winners were chosen from an applicant pool of more than 1000 micro entrepreneurs. Women accounted for nearly 50% of all the applicants, indicating micro-credit’s popularity among them. Among the winners, apart from Kusum Tanwar of Delhi, all the others come from semi-urban and rural areas. A press release from the Citi Foundation says: “The awards were classified in three distinct categories- National Winner, National Runner-up and Social Responsibility. Keeping in mind the social, cultural and economic challenges in different parts of the country, awards in each category were presented to winners from four regions- East, West, North and South. Each National Winner of the 2007 Citigroup Micro Entrepreneur Awards received a cash prize of Rs.200,000/-. The National Runners-Up and winners in the Social Responsibility category received prize money of Rs.100,000/- each. NGOs, which nominated the awardees, received a special citation commending their efforts”.

The Citi Micro Entrepreneurs Awards program is a fantastic initiative that encourages entrepreneurship as a driver of social and economic change at the base of the pyramid. The program also provides us with real-life examples to understand the tremendous amount of impact that micro-credit can have at the base of the pyramid.

Here’s wishing everyone a happy holiday season! Merry Christmas!