An Unconventional Convention - Villgro Unconvention 2019
"Alignment of ecosystems is urgently needed to tackle India’s massive economic and social problems, and encouraging signs are emerging as social enterprises rise to the occasion."
10 years ago, I had the chance to travel across a large amount of North India visiting church plants across Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Himchal Pradesh, and Punjab. The people I encountered at every stop were incredibly beautiful humans with amazing hearts who greeted us as if we were long lost family members. This trip had a huge impact on me and I think about the people of India quite often.
As I was checking up on my social impact news from around the world, I ran across an article talking about Villgro’s 10th Annual Unconvention that just recently ended. Villgro is a social enterprise incubator based in Southern India providing support and funding to startups across agribusiness, health, education & employability, and energy & cleantech.
A quick tour through some of the companies they are aligned with shows companies that are solving some pain-points that often hit developing and emerging economies hardest. It’s those being affected the most by these conditions that have the motivation and the most to gain for solving these problems, whether it’s innovative ways of testing for diseases like Malaria, or unique solutions for how to access more reliable water for agriculture.
As they state on their website, “We envisioned an organization that moves away from the traditional form of charity to a more sustainable approach where the poor and marginalised are stakeholders in their own growth.” When people are empowered to solve the problems they are facing, it’s a win for everybody. The solutions being developed in these areas will have much greater impact when shared across the world and built upon to solve even greater problems.
For more about this year’s Unconvention, YourStory has a good summary here: https://yourstory.com/2019/12/villgro-unconvention-social-innovation-scale
For more about Villgro and all that they are involved in, check out their website here: https://www.villgro.org/about-us/