Jamshedpur, Jan. 29: The 8th National Conference on Social Entrepreneurship, organized as part of XLRI’s mission to promote management education with a social conscience and to propagate dialogue on social development, was inaugurated on Friday.
Organized under the aegis of Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology and Sustainability and SIGMA-oikos, the inaugural affair was attended by a large gathering.
The theme of the conference is “Social Innovations: Changing Lives and Society.” The keynote address was delivered by Prof Anil Gupta, Executive Vice-Chairman, National Innovation Foundation, and founder of Honey Bee Network. He is also a professor in the Centre of Management in Agriculture, IIM Ahmedabad.
Gupta stressed on the need for grass root innovators, the need to empower them, recognize social entrepreneurs and reward them by safeguarding their interests.
He talked about his idea on social entrepreneurship and what qualities an ideal social entrepreneur should have: daring, innovation and focusing on the grass root levels.
He talked about how every problem had a solution and his belief that the ability to find a way out of tight spots is something an entrepreneur should possess.
He also talked about frameworks and challenges that the social entrepreneur will face and how to tackle it. This was followed by a fruitful and interactive Q & A session.
SIGMA, which came into existence in 2002, is a society of a group of budding future corporate managers, who consider it their duty to work for the community. They provide solutions to certain problems or suggest appropriate ideas in the issues concerning the community development.
The main aim of the group is to help social institutions like NGOs formulate effective fund-raising strategies, develop new programs, curtail expenses and perform better. In essence, it works on projects for building sustainable business models for NGOs and small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).