INAUGURATION OF NSEF CHAPTER IN MOUNT CARMEL COLLEGE, BANGALORE

National Social Entrepreneurship Forum, in its mission of promoting social entrepreneurship on campus, is expanding into new centres. The inauguration of the new chapter of Mount Carmel College, Bangalore would comprise a number of speaker sessions by active social entrepreneurs.

Timing: Saturday, 14th August 2010, 9:30 to 11:30 AM.

Venue:

SPEAKERS

Vishal Talreja

After working for three years in the corporate sector with Xerox and Technology Holdings, Vishal co-founded Dream A Dream in 1999. Vishal is an Ashoka Fellow and is also smember of Boards of many social organizations including Unltd India, ITIHAS and Bangalore Cares. He has represented Dream A Dream at many national and international forums including as an "Architect of the Future" at the Waldzell Meetings - A Global Dialog on Inspiration at Austria.
His most touching and memorable moment has been, 'when a young child said that, "If not for the guidance he got from Dream A Dream, he would have been out on the streets. Dream A Dream helped him find his dream and the courage to pursue it." Vishal wants to set the highest benchmarks of credibility, impact, transparency and accountability within Dream A Dream thus building a successful, scaleable and highly effective organization.

Smitha Ramakrishna

Smita Ramakrishna has a Bachelor's degree in Psychology from Christ College, Bangalore and a Master's degree in Social work from School of Social work, Roshni Nilaya in Mangalore. She co-founded Rang De in the year 2008, prior to which she worked for the non-profit sector in india. She worked as social worker at FAME India Bangalore with a special focus on integrating people with disabilities through job placements. She also worked as an HIV/AIDS Counsellor before going to United kingdom to work for their local government. Smita worked for the Community Learning Support of the county council and worked with neglected communities in the UK. She also recently completed a Goldman Sach's funded and ISB conducted Certificate Program for women Entrepreneurs.

She currently works as Chief Operating Officer at Rang De - a social initiative to support rural entrepreneurs with cost-effective loans in order to make them self reliant. Since, its inception Rang De has reached out to 4000 micro-entrpreneurs across India.

Kakoli Das is the founder of a mission based organization called The Red River. The organization aims at creating income generation opportunities for home based artisans and weavers. The Red River focuses on trend right designs, creating markets, quality and implementing their production in home based set ups under rigorous processes to make high quality, premium hand made products.The Red River sells online through www.theredriver.in and supplies wholesale to domestic retailers. The organization is actively exploring exports currently. The organization is currently focusing on the crafts of the North East, but has ambitious plans of entering Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh soon to blend crafts of different regions together to make a whole new range of products.
The Red River envisions using technology as an enabler to create more impacts in the craft sector. It uses social media actively to build brand, and is trying to create a "co-creation" eco-system through its online platform.
Kakoli holds a B Tech in Electronics from NIT, Silchar [2003]. She has 6 years of IT & Retail experience. She worked in Merchandising Analytics at the US retail giant Target in their Bangalore & Minneapolis offices for 5 years before taking the entrepreneurial plunge.
An ardent dog lover, Kakoli loves to spend time playing with dogs, nurturing, rehabilitating homeless dogs.She loves colors, and admires things of beauty and often finds them in daily life objects like dried leaves, coffee mugs, flowers, crafts.