Moments so Far ...

Suppose you are developing the concept of rural tourism for a village. You start getting enquiries for weekdays trip or for bulk booking say 50+ people or for overnight stays. Now what will you do? You only thought that the village could be a weekend destination with 10-15 people per day but its not. I would recommend that you discuss the same with your local connect and lt him have a internal discussions with various stakeholders in village and come back with his commitment. Show him the stretch goals but do not enforce them. Its their village and they know best as to how much capacity they can build and how much timeoff they can take from their routine farming tasks. Its their business to decide how much they want to take/make? Its not easy for them to accept money in return for the hospitality they provide, they treat it as their duty and do it out of pure love. You may want to go beyond tourism development and will get an urge to develop village. Resist your urge and allo...

ASK -- Talk to people who may have links to nearby villages. People who touch your daily life like your security guard,drivers,housekeeping. They may be working in your residence, in your apartment complex, in your neighborhood, at your workplace. Tell them that you would like to spend a day in their village with them. VISIT -- Visit them based on their convenience and walk around their village. Enjoy local hospitality. If possible try to have your local connect arrange for breakfast/lunch. Take photographs and video of the place with their permissions. SPREAD -- Write about your experience in blogs and post photos and videos at web sites. Talk to your family friends and workplace colleagues and arrange another trip with a combination of them. EMPOWER -- Let your local connect start arranging the trips and taking care of everything from transport, to food and acting as local guide. He can make more and more people from village participate in succeeding trips and spreads the goodwill. ...

Prasanna Jyothi is an orphanage run under Prasanna trust chaired by Swami Sukhabodhananda. Its focus is on women empowerment. The place is well maintained and children are treated as their own despite their backgrounds. All girls from LKG to 7 th standard go to an English medium school in Jayanagar 7 th phase and are back in home by 3:30 PM. Current funding is through Prasanna trust and through donations. About Rs 30K is spent per child per annum and the home maintenance goes upto Rs 2 lakhs. Key Areas of growth – self sustainability 1. Catering – Right now they cater to a company on airport road for about 100 plates. They need to reach out to more consistent order base and more exposure through dedicated counter during festival time. Also need to grow into tiffin(morning breakfast/evening dinner) space for bachelors in neighborhood. The caretakers help the grown up girls in cooking. 2. Real estate – They have a site of 30*40 which can be developed into either a...

Some NGO's can become self-sustained over a period of time and then can grow and multiply. Volunteers can focus on cause and its corrective development. The NGO then becomes for profit venture but the funds are utilized for self-growth and sustenance. You can visit NGO around neighborhood and understand their current running/operations. If possible discuss their self-sustenance model and growth. Provide ideas from our shared learnings. If allowed to shoot video then you can interview the volunteers/owners there. You can also shoot the activities that they do there and post them at http://www.youtube.com/group/ngoneighbor. Also you could develop the ideas with like minded people in orkut under community " NGOs around you ". The same has been responded to in linkedin. There is a group in google that is developing similar ideas at http://groups.google.co.in/group/ socialentrepreneur.