Jamshedpur: SIGMA, the social initiative arm of XLRI, successfully completed the two-day Social Entrepreneurship Conclave today with a total of 16 speakers addressing the panel on the overall theme of �Entrepreneurship for Urban Sustainability� over a span of two days i.e. 9th and 10thFebruray. The event held at XLRI was planned under the aegis of Prof. Madhukar Shukla, Chairperson, Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability (FACES) in association with Tata Steel.
There were 3 sessions held on the first day, covering the sub-themes of urban governance, access to basic social services, and protecting the core environment. Two more sessions were held on the second day of the conclave, with sub-themes of strengthening the informal workforce and waste and pollution management. Additionally, the keynote address by Dr. Jagan Shah covered the broad aspects of urban sustainability. The first topic on urban governance saw discourses by Dr. Poornima Dore, Head, Data Governance, Tata Trusts; Sourav Roy, Chief of CSR, Tata Steel; and Sophie Charrios, Vice President, Oikos International.
The panelists spoke about the issue in an Indian context, the emergence of data and technology, and the need for a visionary leadership in urban governance. The second topic for the day was on access to basic social services where the panel of speakers consisted of Thomas Pullenkav, Technical Lead, SELCO Foundation; Pratima Joshi, Co-Founder and ED, Shelter Associates; and Saransh Vaswani, Founder and Director, Saajha.
Here, the speakers focused on solar energy solutions, sanitation solutions and the services at government schools. The third topic was on protecting the core environment whose speakers were � Shubhendu Sharma, Founder & Director, Afforestt; Shubha Ramachandran, Founding Member, Biome Solutions; and Arun Krishnamurthy, Founder, Environmentalists India.
The fourth topic on strengthening the informal workforce saw sessions by Krishnavtar Sharma, Co-founder and ED, Aajeevika Bureau; Pritha Dutt, Director, Empower Pragati; and Barsha Poricha, Director, CURE. The session focused on improving livelihoods for vulnerable local communities. The last panel on waste and pollution management saw speeches by Sourav Roy, Chief of Sustainability, JUSCO; Nalini Shekhar, Co-founder, Hasirudala; and Odette Katrak, Co-Founder, Beautiful Bengaluru. The session came with learnings around how each individual can contribute towards reducing waste and pollution.
Both days saw a full-house participation from social entrepreneurs, corporates, budding social entrepreneurs, under graduate and post graduate students. It was a great learning experience as per the feedback from the participants.
XLRI provided the ideal platform for the exchange of ideas, problems and their solutions, among the speakers and the attendants by means of various interactive sessions in the conclave. SIGMA (Social Initiative Group for Managerial Assistance) is student run social collaborative group at XLRI which run under the able guidance of Professor Madhukar Shukla.