BIS #2595 CENTRE FOR SOCIAL CHANGE

Adolph Furtado

KURLA, SEPTEMBER 21, 2011: The Centre for Social Change is the latest initiative of Don Bosco Centre for Learning, Kurla. This Centre will focus on the three foundation pillars of DBCL namely. Learning, Empowerment and Transformation.

In the area of Learning, the Centre will create an awareness of Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship among potential entrepreneurs who could be students or otherwise. For this purpose the Centre will use PanIIT and iCreate. DBIT has already signed an MOU with iCreate and PanIIT to provide access to Entrepreneurship Development to the students on the DBCL campus as well as participants in the outreach programs.

The Centre will also have other Partners like Grameen Creative Lab, the Hub, National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN), National Economic and social Forum (NESF) and so on. These partners will work in collaboration or independently to empower young entrepreneurs with inputs, mentoring and funding. The young entrepreneurs will come up with pure commercial business proposals or social business proposals.

The business proposals will be screened and the ones which will have a greater probability to succeed will be selected to be part of the incubation cell. The Centre will also address the issues of Not for Profit outfits (NGOs) by empowering the field workers with relevant skills and the Coordinators/Heads with Leadership skills. The Centre will also examine how complementary skills can be offered to students in the vocational training space as well as see if the current curriculum of the vocational training needs to be revisited in order to make it more industry relevant.

The Centre will mobilize students from all the institutes on the campus to actively participate in the achievement of its aims and objectives. Thus the Centre will be the fulcrum and the focus of the Campus. It will strive for synergy among the Institutes and the knowledge and skills they provide. It will also ensure that the goals set are in alignment with the Don Bosco ideals.

The Centre through this process aims at empowering youth to become skilled entrepreneurs and transformational leaders who change the paradigm under which business is currently being transacted.
 
The Centre for Social Change will be headed by Dr. Sarika Kulkarni.