Seed, Scale and Grow – The Why, What and How of Vibha’s approach

Seed, Scale and Grow – The Why, What and How of Vibha’s approach

The last conducted official Census of India (2011) say that almost 99 million school going age children have dropped off and over 33 million of them are engaged in child labor. It was also found that over 20 million children under the age of 6 were severely malnourished and 4.5 million girl children were married – out of which over 3 million become mother of two or more  children before they turned 15.

These are staggering numbers. Tackling the systemic issues behind these numbers takes concerted efforts focused on building solutions that are scalable, sustainable and replicable. One that brings all stakeholders – social entrepreneurs, volunteers, donors government agencies, corporates and the local community firmly together for our children, for our future. This is where Vibha comes into the picture.

Over the last 27 years, Vibha has been able to identify, seed-fund and scale up several solutions that have created large scale social impact benefitting millions of children.

“GROWTH IS NEVER BY MERE CHANCE; IT IS THE RESULT OF FORCES WORKING T O GETHER. “

— JAMES CASH PENNEY, FOUNDER, JC PENNEY

But what makes it even more remarkable is that all this is made possible by volunteer efforts – be it through organizing fundraisers, monitoring project investments, running awareness campaigns, forging corporate partnerships or mentoring social entrepreneurs on the ground.

This social venture catalyst mindset combined with the volunteer driven approach ensures that Vibha’s efforts deliver the maximum Return On Investment (ROI) whether it is volunteer time or funds deployed.

HOW DOES VIBHA DO IT?

ACTING AS A SOCIAL VENTURE CATALYST

Vibha’s project selection philosophy is based on the fundamental principle of maximizing the impact of every contribution. Every project funded by Vibha needs to fit in with the mission and vision of Vibha. The project should not discriminate based on gender, caste, race, religion or language and should be a nonpolitical, not-for profit organization. Apart from the above mandatory qualities expected out of every project, the project selection team has a set of qualitative criteria which will ensure the effectiveness of the project in accomplishing its goals. Vibha makes a concerted effort to select small to medium-sized projects.

Once selected, the social entrepreneur is provided with the necessary seed capital as well as know-how with constant project monitoring assistance through Vibha personnel and staff on the ground that ensures the project is meeting it’s desired goals. If after a certain period of time (typically 3 years), the project has not achieved its goal of finding a scalable solution for the problem, Vibha starts a gradual exit process so as to ensure the project continues to benefit its beneficiaries with minimal disturbance.

If the project does achieve its goal of finding a scalable cure for the problem it is trying to solve, Vibha now plays the role of disseminating this cure far and wide through various channels including partner NGOs.

In short, it strives to enable people to take responsibility for the situation of an underprivileged child

partnering with government, corporates, local communities and other stakeholders

While Vibha can play the role of identifying and fine tuning solutions, we also believe that Government of the respective geography is best positioned to scale and implement any socio-economic solution from an infrastructure and resource perspective. Vibha does not believe in creating parallel systems, we see value in fine tuning or filling the gaps in existing systems to make them more valuable.

The advent of Corporate Social Responsibility as a government policy in many countries has suddenly made available vast amounts of resources to the development sector. But oftentimes these corporates lack the bandwidth or expertise to deploy these resources. Vibha is uniquely positioned to help these organizations by playing the role of an implementation partner. The resources can be channelized to scaling of tried and tested solutions in the Vibha portfolio.

Mobilizing local communities as volunteers or donors in our efforts is a core tent of Vibha’s philosophy. We will continue to invest in and scale these efforts

ADVOCACY EFFORTS

Where relevant and meaningful, Vibha involves itself in policy advocacy efforts to further the cause of child development.

THE VIBHA METHODOLOGY

KEY FACTORS THAT VIBHA EVALAUTES IN SOLUTI ONS

  • Governance
  • Fiscal Management
  • Program Management
  • Planning
  • Resource Development
  • Marketing & Communication
  • Volunteer Management
  • Human Resources
  • Community Outreach
  • Operations
  • Collaboration
  • Advancing Public Will

Vibha adopted the above criteria from the Atlanta Community Foundation in 2011

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