Four outstanding women social entrepreneurs are finalists of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year- India 2015 Awards

Chandigarh, October 19, 2015:Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, a sister organization of the World Economic Forum, in partnership with Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, an initiative of the Jubilant Bhartia Group, today announced 'all women'finalists of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY)- India 2015 Awards. Following a rigorous due diligence process, four social entrepreneurs emerged as finalists and they are:



· Ashraf Patel (Pravah and Commutiny Youth Collective, New Delhi)

· Poonam BirKasturi (Daily Dump, Bengalaru)

· PremaGopalan (SwayamShikshanPrayog, Pune) and

· Suparna Gupta (Aangan Trust , Mumbai)



Winner, amongst these finalists, will be chosen by a distinguished jury and announced at an awards ceremony scheduled for November 03, 2015, in New Delhi. Mr. Piyush Goyal, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Power, Coal, New & Renewable Energy, Government of India, has kindly agreed to be the Chief Guest and give away the awards.



The finalists of the SEOY-India 2015 Awardsare shaping change in the fields of youth development, urban waste management, rural livelihoods and child protection. They are unleashing the extraordinary power of ordinary citizens to build catalytic and change-making communities across India. All four ventures are building large-scale movements through behaviour change and collaborations with unusual allies.



According to Mrs.Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, "We are delighted that applications to the Social Entrepreneur of the Year Awards in India grow every year and consistently demonstrate significant innovation and scale. This year, we are also happy to have an all-women finalist pool, each entrepreneur working on social priorities high on India's policy agenda including skilling, entrepreneurship promotion and sanitation".



Congratulating the finalists, Mr. Shyam S Bhartia, Chairman & Founder and Mr. Hari S Bhartia, Co-Chairman &Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Groupand Founder Directors of Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, said, "Our country is experiencing tremendous growth of social entrepreneurs, who are looking at disruptive ways of innovation, to bring about social change. Our 'all women finalists' are role models, who possess strong will-power to redefine ethos of social development.Jubilant Bhartia Foundation is deeply involved in social development work, especially in healthcare, education and livelihood. We are delighted to, once again, partner with Schwab Foundation in this endeavour."




The SEOY-India 2015 Awards, which opened in April this year, received 154 applications of exceptional quality. Through a five-stage selection process, four finalists were shortlisted after on-site visits, background research, reference checks and multiple rounds of deliberations.

SEOY has established itself as the prestigious event in India with a legacy of over 14 years. The Schwab Foundation has been selecting and recognizing social entrepreneurs globally since year 2001. Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, partnered with Schwab Foundation in the year 2010, to conduct the Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) Awards in India. This year marks the sixth year of partnership between Schwab Foundation and Jubilant Bhartia Foundation to bring together country's most coveted awards for Social Entrepreneurship.

Brief Descriptions of the Finalists



Ashraf Patel

Pravah and Commutiny-The Youth Collective (CYC)

Field: Education, Public Service, Leadership and Governance

Headquartered at: New Delhi

Year of Establishment:Pravah 1993. (CYC 2008)

Legal Form of Business:Registered Society

Website: www.pravah.org



Pravah and CYC are building vibrant eco-systems across India to launch young social entrepreneurs, changemakers and active citizens and propel their models of positive social change.

The organizations have pioneered a unique youth-centric approach to development called the '5thSpace'. The 5th space rejects instrumentalizing the youth for political, economic and development gains. Instead, it focuses as much on transforming the youth and building their leadership potential, as on transforming society through them.

By design, 5th spaces are co-created and led by the youth. They are safe spaces of learning and active experimentation to shape social change. Here, the youth engage with diversity and the 'other', only to discover and transform their own selves. The 5th space sees the young as leaders of today, not of the future. In a country with the world's largest and fastest growing youth demographic, the 5th Space opens up possibilities of building a vast and empathetic youth human capital. It also offers pedagogies, psycho-social tools and platforms to put the youth in charge of transforming India, positively.

The construct of the 5th Space was crystallized by Pravah on the back of two decades of intensive work with adolescent and youth across various stages of their lifecycle. Pravah worked in schools, colleges, communities and other youth hang-out zones to design and deploy a vast repertoire of processes, experiences and tools that enabled young people to build their own 5th Space communities. These included self-awareness workshops, citizenship and social entrepreneurship education, leadership trainings, internships, learning journeys, campaigns, media and cultural engagements, incubation services, mentoring and seed funds. As an avalanche of youth changemakers and social entrepreneurs started to emerge, CYC was architected to scale this movement.



Over 22 years, Pravah and CYC have collectively worked with 6,78,900 youth across rural and urban India to train them in the principles and processes of the 5th Space. They have launched 57,500 young leaders and incubated 300 young social entrepreneurs across 20 states. They are now visibilizing this movement and creating an architecture for collaboration by building a country-wide network of 5th Space changemakers. Currently, more than 400 organizations are being facilitated by Pravah and CYC to adopt the 5th Space principles to design to launch young changemakers in their geographies. Led by Ashraf Patel, the two entities are also using the 5th Space compass to shape the national youth policy of India.



Poonam Bir Kasturi

Daily Dump

Field: Waste Management

Headquartered at: Bangalore, Karnataka

Year of Establishment: 2006

Legal Form of Business:Private Limited Company

Website: www.dailydump.org



According to government estimates, homes generate 75% of all organic wastes produced in urban India. Daily Dump targets to manage this waste right where it is generated – within families.

Calling herself "compostwali" Poonam BirKasturi, founder of Daily Dump, has fused design thinking, traditional pottery and the science of composting to develop more than 50 aesthetic products and services that enable urban Indians to compost their waste at home and be part of the solution to India's monumental trash nightmare.

Its flagship product is the terracotta pots known as 'Khambas'. They fit into small apartments and come in different versions to match the family size and volumes of kitchen waste generated. With no foul smell emanating and easy maintenance, the pot converts kitchen waste into compost over two months. Larger apartment blocks and residential colonies are buying into Daily Dump's community waste management product called the 'AAGA' to do collective composting. Thus, the Khamba and the Aagas are transforming the relationship of families with their waste, urging them to shrug off apathy, re-shape their behaviours and make segregation an unobtrusive part of their daily lives.

The growing demand of the 'Khamba' is tripling the incomes of the potter communities that manufacture them. The enhanced product differentiation and value has spurred potter entrepreneurs across India to re-cast their traditional vocation into a new technology. Daily Dump has also catalyzed new networks of 'waste evangelists' or urban compost entrepreneurs across 17 cities. They retail Daily Dump products and related 'green' services, making way for ethical and conscious consumer behaviours, strengthening circular economies and reducing the solid waste footprint of waste generators.

With over 25,000 committed users, including families, businesses and other institutions, Daily Dump's products have directly impacted more than 2 lakh individuals. The humble terracotta pots has created





impact at multiple levels – keeping more than 20,000 tons of organic waste out of landfills per day, contributing to safer working conditions for informal waste collectors, sustaining a dying craft and increasing incomes of potter communities.



Prema Gopalan

SwayamShikshanPrayog (SSP) Group of Ventures

Field: Women Empowerment, clean energy, health, micro finance and entrepreneurship

Headquartered at: Pune, Maharashtra

Year of Establishment: 1998

Legal Form of Business: Registered Trust

Website:www.sspindia.org



Working with the most vulnerable communities of climate change and disaster-affected areas, the SSP group of ventures is building a new generation of disaster-resilient women entrepreneurs and grassroots women community leaders. Over two decades, it has equipped more than 70,000 women to partner with global and local businesses and architect sustainable rural social businesses - in clean energy, sanitation, basic health services, nutrition and safe agriculture. This has opened up new markets, non-traditional livelihood incomes, tripled household incomes and revitalized ailing village economies.

The SSP group of ventures is a network of five enterprises that together nurture the entrepreneurial eco-systems and value chains needed for women to succeed in remote and excluded areas. These include a federated network of 5000 Self Help Groups (SHGs); a Microfinance Institution (MFI) that offers financial services and loans to women-led businesses; a rural school of entrepreneurship that functions as a business incubator and training hub and; a social enterprise that provides dedicated branding, marketing and distribution services to grassroots business women.

The continuum of a SHG, a MFI, a rural business school and a rural marketing enterprise has created dynamic hubs of informed women consumers, producers, savers, borrowers, entrepreneurs and community leaders across 2000 villages in 4 states. It has also galvanized investors, product manufacturers, enterprise trainers and government schemes and policies that last-mile and opaque markets need to accelerate livelihoods.

SSP has also twinned disaster resilience and livelihoods at the policy level. It partnered with the National Disaster Management Association of India (NDMA) to set up the first Community Disaster Resilience Fund- that catalyzed women entrepreneurs to build local innovative market-linked disaster resilience and risk-reduction solutions. This initiative has further replicated to 7 Indian states and 3 Asian countries through strategic partnerships.

Over two decades, SSP has launched more than 70,000 women entrepreneurs with a total consumer base of 773000 families and cumulative earnings of INR 20 crores per month. These include 45,000 women who engaged for the first time productive activities. By unleashing new market-linked livelihoods, the SSP group of ventures has increased household incomes of entrepreneurs by INR 3000-



5000 per month. More than 500 women leaders from the SSP federation have fought and won Panchayat elections.



Suparna Gupta

Aangan Trust

Field: Child protection

Headquartered at: Mumbai, Maharashtra

Year of Establishment: 2000

Legal Form of Business: Registered- Not for profit

Website: www.aanganindia.org



Aangan Trust is converting India's hot spots of child violence into communities that are safe and responsive to children. It works with the full range of actors and institutions that a vulnerable child encounters – both before and after the occurrence of harm- and transforms them into child protection champions.

In communities marked by intense poverty and violence, Aangan sets up local, child safety circles that are powered by unusual allies- parents, government officials and young changemakers. These hubs are led by barefoot, home grown child protection experts. Trained rigorously by Aangan, these 'champions' harness technology, tap into community intelligence and deploy behavior change tools to prevent the occurrence and recurrence of harm to their children (such as child marriage, trafficking, hazardous employment).

In shelters and institutions (that mostly function as over-crowded holding cells for children rescued after serious harm), Aangan trains the staff in management systems, technical acumen, communication methods and operational tools. This equip them to execute child protection laws, policies and programs, speedily, effectively and empathetically. The systems-change approach gradually minimizes the staying period of children in the homes, thereby minimizing subsequent cycles of violence.

Since 2002, Aangan has worked across 39 hot spots of child violence in six states to train 310 barefoot child protection experts. They, in turn have impacted more than 57,000 at-risk children in last-mile communities. Further, officials of 642 institutions and shelters across 17 states have trained in Aangan's child safety management systems, positively impacting 150,000 children who have been residents of their homes. A majority have embedded Aangan's approach in their institutional blue prints. More than 20 government orders have been passed, based on Aangan's tools, to professionalize India's institutions and shelters for children.

As more ground-up, community-led child protection circles emerge, and institutions become empathetic and responsive, Aangan aims to plug both the formal and informal systems into an India-wide web of child safety solutions.

Originally Source : Perfect Relations