The SEOY India
Award brings some of the most remarkable change-makers from the country onto a common
platform. These social entrepreneurs are promising change-makers and
self-starters, with a strong inclination towards addressing the most pertinent
needs of the marginalised communities in both, scalable and sustainable ways.
Their endeavours encapsulate alleviating poverty, hunger, gender inequality,
promoting women empowerment and education. These social entrepreneurs are the
torch-bearers who have taken the onus of working towards managing micro-finance
needs and daunting challenges like climate change. The tenets of this year’s
finalists are aligned with the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals.
They have demonstrated their unwavering commitment in finding answers to new
age problems with their technology driven, scalable, sustainable and innovative
solutions.
Over the years, SEOY
India Award is one of the most reputed and coveted award for country’s social
entrepreneurs. The Award bestows adulation and honours the finest model in
social entrepreneurship and the entrepreneur who have been instrumental in
nurturing a dream of articulating value for their community. The three
finalists of 2018 are working with the Government as well as Private
Partnerships to herald grass-root transformations, through their enterprise and
sustainable models.
The Schwab Foundation
for Social Entrepreneurship, the sister organisation of the World Economic
Forum and the Jubilant Bhartia Foundation of Jubilant Bhartia Group on Monday
announced the finalists for the SEOY award.
The three finalists
are: Jessica Mayberry and Stalin K of Video Volunteers (VV), Goa; Smita Ram and
Ramakrishna NK of Rang De, Bengaluru and Prema Gopalan of Swayam Shikshan
Prayog (SSP), Pune.
Congratulating the
finalists, Hilde Schwab, Co-founder and Chairperson, Schwab Foundation for
Social Entrepreneurship, said, “The calibre of all finalist candidates is truly
impressive. They all deserve recognition for their ground-breaking work to
create a more inclusive India.”
Applauding the
finalists, Shyam S Bhartia, Chairman and Founder and Hari S Bhartia,
Co-Chairman and Founder, Jubilant Bhartia Group and Founder Directors of
Jubilant Bhartia Foundation, said, “This is the ninth year of our enriching
partnership with the Schwab Foundation. Through this association, we have been
able to showcase the best and highlight various social issues and numerous
possible ways to solve those. The platform of SEOY India Award has brought to
the forefront, impactful social entrepreneurs bringing about a positive change
and providing innovative solutions to the community. The three finalists of
this year are unique in their own individual way.”
This year, the Award
will be presented by Dr Rajiv Kumar, Vice Chairman, National Institution for
Transforming India, NITI Aayog, Government of India on October 11, 2018 in New
Delhi.
The SEOY India 2018
Award opened in March this year and received over 107 applications of
exceptional quality. The finalists for this prestigious Award were identified
based on rigorous due diligence process.
Through a five-stage
selection process, the finalists were shortlisted after on-site visits,
background research, reference checks and multiple rounds of deliberations.
Education sector (47%) leads the nomination tally followed by Health (44%),
Environment (43%) & Rural Development (42%). The other sectors which
participated most actively were Enterprise Development, Technology, Water
sanitation, communication/media and Microfinance.
About Video Volunteers run by Jessica Mayberry and Stalin K from
Goa
70 per cent of India
lives in its villages. But less than 2 per cent of media content relates to
rural and marginal communities. As internet penetrates into remote locations,
rural communities are becoming passive consumers of media; not active creators
of content that will give them voice and representation.
To upturn this, Video
Volunteers is building a community media model that enables marginalized
citizens to become media content producers and use it to right the wrongs. VV
has set up India Unheard – the country’s largest grassroots news agency that
brings high quality video news reports from 200 of India’s poorest and
‘media-dark’ districts. 250 trained Community Correspondents (CCs) flank out
into 2000 villages to conceive, produce and edit news videos on their mobile
phones. They drill up ‘news by those who live it, telling stories that
mainstream audiences typically don’t want to know. The CC’s come from Adivasi,
Dalit, religious and sexual minority communities. All live before the poverty
line. 57 per cent among them are women (against 25 per cent representation of
women in national mainstream media) [1]. Their stories focus on gender,
violence, untouchability, education, hunger, health, sanitation, forced
eviction and other burning issues. Their videos are broadcast on mainstream
news channels and digital media platforms. They are screened in remote corners
by hyper local civil society networks.
Over
15 years, VV has published more than 5600 news videos and registered 4 million
You Tube views a month. 25 per cent or 1 in 4 videos have created impact – i.e.
resolved the issue that they raised – leading 4 lakh people to live improved
lives. 300,000 rural citizens have viewed the videos through community
screenings and 200,000 have engaged in action to change what they see around
them. 400 government officials have been moved to reverse discriminatory norms.
