Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Defence, Government of India to give away the awards
IndiaCSR News Network
NOIDA: Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship and Jubilant Bhartia Foundation today announced the finalists of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) India Award 2014. The finalists are:
Bodh Shiksha Samiti (founded by Yogendra Bhushan),
Karuna Trust (founded by Dr. H Sudarshan) and
Magic Bus (founded by Matthew Spacie)
The winner will be chosen by a distinguished jury and announced at an awards ceremony scheduled on November 04, 2014, in New Delhi. Shri Arun Jaitley, Minister of Finance, Corporate Affairs and Defence, Government of India, is the Chief Guest and will give away the award.
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All the finalists of the SEOY India 2014 Award are working to bring about a dynamic change in the field of health, education and youth development – factors that are critical for development. All the three finalists have actively nurtured Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) to scale up their innovations and have shown new impact directions for CSR in the country. A common strand that runs through their work is their commitment to work in remote corners of India and bring transformational change.
Commenting on the finalists, Hilde Schwab, Co-founder & Chairperson, Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship, said, “We are inspired by the three finalists of the Social Entrepreneur of the Year India 2014 Awards – all three entrepreneurs are leading initiatives that seek fundamental changes in delivery systems and demonstrate a strong commitment to collaboration and co-creation with the community and other stakeholders. We hope these entrepreneurs and their work will serve as an inspiration to many more social innovators, especially among the country’s youth”.
Congratulating the finalists, Shyam S Bhartia, Chairman & Managing Director and Hari S Bhartia, Co Chairman & Managing Director, Jubilant Life Sciences and Founder Directors of Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, said, “Bodh Shiksha Samiti, Karuna Trust and Magic Bus are transforming India’s health and education systems, ensuring quality healthcare and education facility especially for the marginalized section of the society. They are doing this through integration of their model into public delivery system which leads towards inclusion and equitable development. Jubilant Bhartia Foundation looks forward to collaborating and supporting them with linkages and networks to increase their impact and scale.”
The SEOY India 2014 Awards opened in April this year and received 189 applications of exceptional quality. Through a five-stage selection process, the three 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 13 years. The Schwab Foundation has been selecting and recognizing social entrepreneurs globally since year 2001. The Jubilant Bhartia Foundation partnered with the Schwab Foundation in the year 2010 to conduct the Social Entrepreneur of the Year (SEOY) Awards in India. 2014 marks the fifth year of partnership between Schwab Foundation and Jubilant Bhartia Foundation to bring together country’s most coveted awards in Social Entrepreneurship. The SEOY Award has offered to its winners a chance to participate in the relevant annual and regional meetings of the World Economic Forum.
Brief Descriptions of the Finalists
Yogendra Bhushan
Bodh Shiksha Samiti (Bodh)
Field: Education
Headquartered at: Jaipur
Year of Establishment: 1987
Legal Form of Business: Not for profit
Bodh Shiksha Samiti has galvanized India’s ultra-poor communities to transform their villages and slums into centers of education excellence. It has pioneered the common schools movement, where schools (called Bodhshalas) are built, managed and co-owned by, mostly BPL, communities in areas untouched by the government education system.
Families contribute land, labour and capital (often as high as INR 9-10 Lakhs), to set up and scale their Bodhshalas from primary to secondary levels. Students, parents and teachers drive school management and keep a strict eye on education quality. As a result, Bodhshalas typically achieve 99% enrolment of male and female students, drop-out rates of less than 10% and learning outcomes that are higher than government and affordable private schools of India. Bodh has set up more than 245 common schools in Rajasthan. More than 90% of Bodhshala students are first-generation literates.
After three decades of ground-up education reform, Bodh has impacted more than 20 lakh students and 80,000 teachers in Rajasthan. Its innovations for deepening education quality have been embedded in 20,500 government schools of Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Jharkhand. Additionally, 100 social ventures have partnered with Bodh to scale the common school model to 13 states.
Mathew Spacie
Magic Bus
Field: Education & Sports
Headquartered at: Mumbai
Year of Establishment: 2001
Legal Form of Business: Hybrid not-for-profit
Magic Bus has pioneered a ‘Sport for Development (S4D)’ curriculum that harnesses the transformative power of sport to enable children from impoverished communities to tap into their potential, reflect on life choices, and take positive development decisions for themselves with regard to education, health, livelihoods and leadership – factors that are critical for their growth as active citizens.
Magic Bus has delivered the S4D curriculum to 500,000 children in the age group of 7-18 years across 19 states through a trained network of 8,000 Community Youth Leaders. Community youth leaders are local role models who hail from the same eco-system as the children they train. 50% of all Magic Bus participants constitute girls from disadvantaged families. Today, 99% of Magic Bus children are enrolled in schools; 77% children attend school more than five days a week and 95.7% children intend to continue higher education.
Magic Bus has partnered with the education departments of seven states to embed S4D into the government system. Over the next three years, Mathew and his team aim to reach 1 million children of India and expand the S4D model to South and South-East Asia.
Dr H Sudarshan
Karuna Trust
Field: Health
Headquartered at: Bengaluru
Year of Establishment: 1986
Legal Form of Business: Not for profit
Karuna Trust is transforming dysfunctional government primary healthcare centers (PHCs) into professional hubs of ‘last mile’ healthcare service delivery.
It has pioneered a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model that brings the government, the village community and the social venture together to deliver high quality primary healthcare to rural India. The government invests in upgrading infrastructure and pays for the efficient running of the PHCs; Karuna Trust brings in healthcare management systems and disruptive health innovations to the centers; village health councils hold their PHCs accountable for reporting higher health outcomes and functioning as zero-corruption zones.
Karuna Trust has revitalized 67 PHCs across 7 states, half of which reach remote corners of North-East India. With ISO certification, trained medical and administrative teams, zero-absenteeism of doctors, upgraded infrastructure, tele-medicine, mobile medical units, efficient supply chain of essential medicines and a citizens help desk, PHCs run by Karuna Trust have raised the bar for primary healthcare service in India. They have served more than one million patients and reported health outcomes that are amongst the highest in the country.
