'Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Development', launched in collaboration with Diageo to empower women across India.

The Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Development Programme (YWSEDP) was developed by British Council and Diageo-USL with the objective of disseminating social enterprise expertise to women communities across India. The programme identified and selected organisations that work with women and support the cause of women empowerment. These partner organisations nominated their women employees for becoming 'Master Trainers' in the area of social entrepreneurship through a trainings organised at IIM Kozhikode, thus acquiring necessary tools, methodologies and enhanced awareness of the subject. These Master Trainers in turn organised ‘Cascading Workshops’ and provided social enterprise trainings to women communities they work with. This programme has been implemented in two phases:

  • Phase I of the Programme was implemented during 2013-2014 and trained 24 Master Trainers from 14 partner organisations. They, in turn, cascaded the trainings to 1250 women through 48 workshops.
  • Phase II was implemented during 2015 and expanded the programme by training 59 Master Trainers from 29 partner organisations and reached out to 3100 beneficiaries through 120 cascading training workshops.

Impact showcasing

To celebrate the legacy of Phase I and Phase II of YWSEDP, we are showcasing the overall work and impact stories, while recognizing the implementation of the projects by all the partners, their master trainers and learnings of women communities empowered through the initiative at a series of events in 2017. The proceedings of the events will be fed back into the Phase III design process and contacts made with the event participants will be leveraged for strengthening programme implementation. 

 

“Young Women Social Entrepreneurship development Programme” 2013-14

‘Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Development’ is a partnership programme, launched jointly by Diageo and British Council India on 19th September 2013. The programme has, through the team of Master Trainers, facilitated skills development of active young women with an aim to promote creativity, innovation, employability and growth of an entrepreneurial spirit.

The pilot project was for a period of 12 months with a focus to identify young women trainers (20-35 years, termed as Master Trainers), assess their training needs and improve their capacity by providing necessary tools, innovative methodologies, best practices and increasing their awareness of social entrepreneurship as a career opportunity. Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode (IIMK) was contracted as the training partner and based on needs analysis, designed and delivered a six-day training programme for Master Trainers in February 2014.

The programme, over the course of a year, has trained 24 Master Trainers from 14 diverse institutions who have further cascaded 48 training workshops across India, thus training 1250 young women on social entrepreneurship. This training provided a platform to women beneficiaries to interact among themselves and with the Master Trainers resulting in a number of innovative ideas. Some of these may be developed further to enable women clusters to set-up social enterprises.

The programme has with the support of partner organisations demonstrated a strong commitment to empower women through social enterprise, opening opportunities in the social enterprise domain. We are now expanding the programme by working with more partner organisations and identifying new Master Trainers who will be trained at Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode and then cascade training to more beneficiaries which will largely be young women.

Following organisations and institutes were selected as partners for the programme, Ahmedabad Women’s Action Group, Amity Business School, Avinashilingam University for Women, Banglanatak dot com, Committed Action For Relief And Education, Centre for Social Initiative and Management (CSIM), Creative Handicraft, Happy Hands Foundation, Indian Academy for Self Employed Women (IASEW), Jaipur Rugs Foundation, Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences, Nedan Foundation, Rajiv Gandhi National Institute of Youth Development (RGNIYD) and Swechha-We for Change Foundation.
 

“Young Women Social Entrepreneurship development Programme” 2014-15

With successful completion of the pilot phase of Young Women Social Entrepreneurship Development Programme British Council in partnership with Diageo has taken upon the journey for the second phase. We have carefully selected an additional batch of 36 Master Trainers from 16 new organisations and institutions. Master Trainers have been interviewed and selected in accordance with their training experience, work in social enterprise and their connection with the women they wish to work with.

In continuation with the first phase we have contracted Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode for the second phase training for new master trainers. The training was held from 3rd May to 10th May 2015 at IIMK campus. A number of IIMK faculty facilitated interactive sessions while Helen Vines of Vineswork, Devon,UK gave the trainers a global perspective on Social Enterprise. The training was complemented with Field visit as well as interaction with Social Entrepreneurs. On completion of the training, all master trainers from the first and second phase shall cascade 160+ workshops to almost 3000 young women across 20 states of India.

For second phase we have partnered with the following organisations; Aakar Innovations, Association of Women Entrepreneurs of Karnataka (AWAKE), Association of Lady Entrepreneurs of Andhra Pradesh-ALEAP,  CEQUIN- Centre for Equity and Inclusion, Earthy Goods Foundation, Gujarat National Law University, HARSHA Trust, Idobro-Rise Infinity, Mann Deshi Foundation, The North East Initiative Development Agency (NEIDA), Prodigals Home, Red Dot Foundation –Safecity, Saath , Swayam Shikshan Prayog, Samarthanam Trust for the Disabled and Udyogini. Our partners are from an array of social enterprise working for Women Safety, Hygiene and Sanitation; Green Technologies, Women Cooperatives etc.

With partners spread across India we hope to take this programme to a next level where we can build in a pool of innovative ideas from the beneficiaries and provide them mentoring support to make their inspiration into reality. We stand firm on our commitment to create global opportunities in the domain of Social Enterprise and look forward to expand with more audiences across the world.

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