This series of posts is leading to Pragati ’11 – a two day project wide conference to be organized by Vibha in Pune, India.
As a field of study, delivering education through different public, private and entrepreneurial initiatives in India is well established; as a practice, it has been around even longer. Despite the passage of time, there is still no single accepted best practice of ensuring sure shot results. The various problems faced by any organization thriving to make an impact in child development are well known , yet they continue to plague many such well intentioned initiatives. Documenting, sharing strengths and collectively working to negate weaknesses is a key mechanism that moves any industry forward and ultimately helps deliver quality result to a larger population.
Enter Pragati. This is an initiative of Vibha in India. It’s focus is on stories about growth, scale, and transition that highlight organizational successes and challenges. This effort adds to broader base of how to utilize knowledge sharing for social, community and cultural betterment.
Pragati – a three day project wide conference was conceived in 2009, with a motive to capitalize on a wide a diverse spectrum of projects being supported by Vibha. It was a platform where for the first time 70 grass-root entrepreneurs from all 28 project partners across India could connect, share and leverage the inspiring and path breaking work being done by them. Not only was it successful to foster stronger ties between Vibha and project partners, but it also laid the foundation of better knowledge sharing amongst the projects partners. Following up on recommendations from participating entrepreneurs, customized workshops were organized with a view to help organizations connect to experts from respective fields. This ensured that the seeds of knowledge transfer and application laid during the conference helped organizations improve efficiency post conference. The best part about the momentum gained is that, it has also motivated non-Vibha organizations to join in this initiative to share practices and grow together.
Two years since the first conference, Vibha is once again organizing the Pragati conference in October this year – Pragati 2011 – which will take place from October 01 to October 03, 2011 at the Y.M.C.A. in Pune. The focus of Pragati 2011 is once again to have all 28 project partners connect, share and leverage. While the focus will be on chalking out the future plans for supporting the organizations based on their current obstacles, equal emphasis will be given to reflecting on the successes and weaknesses of programs implemented during these two years. The conference will be providing all project partners the required tools towards assessing the impact of their respective projects. The conference will also stress on the importance of effective financial management as well.
All in all, this year’s conference promises to equip the entrepreneurs with better tool of organizational management; thereby assisting them to increase their efficiency at delivering results.
Stay tuned for live updates from the event.