The Deshpande Foundation and the TIE Boston's Social Entrepreneurship SIG co-sponsored a panel discussion featuring NGO leaders from India at the Taj Boston on Thursday October 1, 2009.  The Boston visit for these social innovators was sponsored by the Deshpande Foundation in the hopes that the interaction with Boston area entrepreneurs, technology experts and others would help them take their social innovation idea to the next level.  The Deshpande Foundation is also partially sponsoring ForSE2009, a social entrepreneurship conference on October 23 at Babson college organized by TIE-Boston.

The leaders Naveen Jha, Director, Mahavir Kumar, Chairman, Agastya, Ashok Kamath, Managing Director, Akshara, Ashok Shettar, Principal, BVB College, Raghavendra Tikot, CEO, Vidyaposhak, Chetna Sinha, CEO, Mann Deshi, Arun Balamatti, CEO, AME Foundation, Sanghamitra Iyengar, Director, Samraksha, BT Poshini, Director of Community Organizing, Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement were featured on  panels focused on  Primary Education, Higher Education and Rural Development.  Each leader spoke about their organization and also answered questions that covered a range of interests.

Naveen Jha is the director of the Deshpande Foundation which is the family Foundation of Gururaj (“Desh”) and Jaishree Deshpande, of Andover, MA. Founded in 1996, the Deshpande Foundation is one of the leading philanthropic Foundations in Massachusetts and India in the areas of innovation, entrepreneurship and international development. Through its grant making, the Deshpande Foundation has helped launch innovative companies, helped NGOs develop an international presence and launched partnerships with some of the most remarkable change agents in the world today. 

One of the greatest challenges in primary education is that the methods used to teach are not child-centric which leads to children dropping out and not really learning. Akshara uses many creative methods to ensure that children are learning.  BT Poshini’s from the Swami Vivekananda Youth Movement focused on providing learning to tribal children who have no access to schools.

The Agastya foundation focuses its effort in enabling creativity amongst people with a range of innovative labs that travel to different areas. Vidyaposhak works with BVB College to improve English communication skills for graduates in the employment market. It is shocking to note that even engineering graduates who are probably very academically skilled cannot speak English fluently. Mann Deshi Foundation is focused on empowering women by running a bank for poor women while Samraksha works on providing increased health services to reduce the impact of HIV/AIDS.

The panel discussions were enlightening and inspiring and mutually beneficial to the leaders and to the visitors.  For more information about the Deshpande Foundation, please check out their web site at

http://www.deshpandefoundation.org/. More information TIE-se may be found at http://tie-se.org.

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