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06
magis
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may 2014
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spotlight
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in its students is only an obvious turn of
events.
The three-day seminar was inaugurated
by Fr E Abraham SJ, Director of XLRI,
Prof. Madhukar Shukla, Co-ordinator,
NCSE and members of SEEDS, a lo-
cal NGO working for the development of
rural communities. Organised under the
aegis of Fr Arrupe Centre for Ecology
and Sustainability by the student com-
mittee SIGMA, the conference’s at-
tempt was to create a platform to show-
case and learn from initiatives and social
ventures which are promoting a
holistic and grounds-up model of develop-
ment.
Voices from the Grassroots, a session
where local villagers shared their experi-
ences and opinions of development as was
understood by the rural population, paved
the pitch for more stimulating discussions
like Building Self-Reliant Communities,
Leveraging Indigenous Resources and
Promoting Entrepreneurship at Grassroots
among others.
The speakers for the inaugural ses-
sion touched upon the humble as-
pects of their lives related with natu-
ral
resources,
livelihood
through
farming, community mobilisation, evils
of alcoholism, rural healthcare and entre-
preneurship.
Other key speakers at the event in-
T
o be
able to think indepen-
dently or to be free from the
bondages of superstition and
orthodoxy might not be the kind
of goals that the frequently used develop-
ment indices can measure. These are also
not the kind of goals that urban dwellers
would aspire for. But shifting the context
to a remote village and to communities
from the grassroots might give such goals a
relevant perspective.
Against such a backdrop where defini-
tion of development varies with location
and with communities, the Sixth National
Conference on Social Entrepreneurship
(NCSE), a flagship event of XLRI, opened
the floor for Rethinking Development:
Strengthening the Grassroots.
For such a conference to come from a
cradle that has always been committed to
inculcating sensitive social conscience
The attempt was to
create a platform to
showcase and learn
from rural initiatives
and social ventures
Co-Founder & CEO, Eko Financial Services, Abhishek Sinha, receives a bouquet from Secretary, SIGMA, Sneha Agrawal
