By Kristen Connors
Before I left for Bangalore, I spoke to a lot of friends and family about SE and the GSE program at Wooster. I usually tell him or her that I will be interning with, and learning from, a local social venture organization. The phrase “co-learning” is highly emphasized in the GSE seminar we take in the spring semester before we come to Bangalore, because our working relationship with these organizations is a give and take. We can help them by working on a problem or task they need done, and we can learn from them a lot about their business models, organizational structure, and even workplace culture, which we pick up implicitly when we spend the day on site. It really is a wonderful, humbling experience, because when I am at my worksite, it is extremely clear to me just how much I have to learn.
Now, I could talk about working at PremaVidya all day long, because I always have a lot of fun when I come it to work, and the workplace atmosphere is quite jovial. However, I think that based on other blog posts my classmates have written, I think it would be worth mentioning other parts of our GSE program besides our internships. Another integral component to the GSE program is the CSIM lecture series. CSIM (Center for Social Initiative and Management) is an organization that supports and nurtures social entrepreneurship and learning communities. 
CSIM’s vision is “Learn, Heal & Raise to build Social Equity.” As a side note, on the CSIM website, you can see that one of their values is “unconditional love”. I think this is awesome. Interestingly, this value is one that I have seen in several mission statements from a variety of social ventures here in India; however, I feel this specific sort of value is relatively uncommon to see expressed so blatantly in the United States. As an organization, CSIM offers a variety of courses and workshops in Social Entrepreneurship. You may even earn a Post Graduate Diploma in Social Initiatives and Management from CSIM. In a nutshell, CSIM is an organization that trains new social entrepreneurs, and connects them with other social entrepreneurs like themselves all over India.
So every Thursday, we all have a half-day at work in the morning, and in the afternoon we all meet as a group for a CSIM lecture. Most of these lectures have been given by social entrepreneurs who have started innovative, and in many cases, award winning social ventures all over India. Each social venture initiative was different and unique. The diversity of social venture initiatives that I have been introduced to in Bangalore so far has been staggering. For example, Rural Shores is a BPO company that brings jobs out to the rural areas of India, instead of forcing young people to migrate to the urban areas. The Light a Life-Reena Raju Foundation was started by Reena Raju, the first heart transplant patient in Karnataka, and educates people about organ donation and transplants. Her foundation also makes organ transplant a feasible option for Indians, bu offering counseling and medication. As you can see, social ventures, and social entrepreneurs come in a variety of shapes and sizes, with different missions, different structures, and different strategies of impact, but all of these organizations aim to do some sort of social good, and the people behind these initiatives are passionate about their mission.
I learn a lot at these sessions; I get so many different ideas about SE from talking to these people. Each organization is structured differently, just as each organization fundraises and scales differently. Some of these social ventures are actually for-profit organizations, while others are more traditional not-for-profit organizations. At the CSIM lectures we undergo a different type of learning than when we are with our organizations. CSIM lectures are more similar to a seminar or a lecture that you would attend at a university. You are able to take notes, just like in a college lecture, and you are subjected to a broad overview of an entire organization, which is useful when you are looking at different types of social ventures, and different models social entrepreneurs do to implement social change. When I am at PV, I know a lot about a few very specific parts of Project 1947, and it is really good to specialize like this sometimes, because the quality of our work with the organization will be much higher than if we just had a general understanding of a lot of different information. Unfortunately, you cannot really learn about workplace culture through the CSIM lectures. That is something that you can only learn by spending time, and working hands in hand with the people working at the organizations. However, when you work so intensively with a specific organization for any amount of time, it is harder sometimes to think of new ideas, especially when you have become so accustomed to the culture of your organization. The CSIM lectures present you with a lot of information and ideas outside of your organization, which can help you evaluate your own organization in a new and different way.
During each lecture we can see all the strengths of the organizations, and even some of the potential weaknesses within the organizations. The question and answer sessions held at the end of each lecture allow us to probe more deeply into important issues that were just glanced over in the initial discussion.
I realized just recently that I actually sometimes feel almost uncomfortable because I am learning so much from these experiences. I feel that there is an imbalance between what I am taking away or learning and what I am personally contributing to my organization and the GSE program. I have definitely been “co-learning” with emphasis on learning. One thing I did learn quickly is that it would be quite hard for me to make a large impact anywhere in just six weeks, and by learning as much as I can now I can make bigger impacts in other places later down the road by using what I have learned here in Bangalore through my internship and CSIM.
