The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer Klaus Schwab. The foundation, which is mostly funded by its 1,000 member companies – typically global enterprises with more than US$5 billion in turnover – as well as public subsidies, views its own mission as "improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic, and other leaders of society to shape global, regional, and industry agendas".
Dhondo Keshav Karve, popularly known as Maharshi Karve, was a social reformer in India in the field of women's welfare. He advocated widow remarriage and he himself married a widow. Karve was a pioneer in promoting widows' education. He founded the first women's university in India - SNDT Women's University. The Government of India awarded him with the highest civilian award, the Bharat Ratna, in 1958, the year of his 100th birthday.He organized a conference against the practice of devdasi. He started 'Anath balikashram' an orphanage for girls. His intention was to give education to all women and make them stand on their own feet. Through his efforts, the first women university was set up in 20th century.
Babasaheb Neelkanth Kalyani is an Indian businessman who served as the chairman and managing director of Bharat Forge, the Flagship company of the Kalyani Group and the world's second-largest forgings manufacturer after ThyssenKrupp of Germany.
Sheela Patel is an activist and academic involved with people living in slums and shanty towns.
Harish Hande is an Indian social entrepreneur, who co-founded SELCO India in 1995. He was awarded with the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2011 for "his pragmatic efforts to put solar power technology in the hands of the poor, through his social enterprise SELCO India".
Fábio Luiz de Oliveira Rosa is a Brazilian social entrepreneur whose initiatives have focused on rural electrification and the use of renewable energy sources.
Prema Gopalan was an Indian social activist. She co-founded the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centers (SPARC) in 1984. She then founded and has been executive director of Swayam Shikshan Prayog (SSP) for over 20 years, supporting poor rural women in entrepreneurial schemes. She is also well known for disaster relief work in Bihar, Gujarat, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. Gopalan has received awards from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the United Nations Development Programme. She died on 29 March 2022 after a short illness at the age of 66.
Chetna Gala Sinha is an Indian social entrepreneur working to empower women in areas of rural India by teaching entrepreneurial skills, access to land and means of production.
Gram Vikas is an Indian non-governmental organisation based in Odisha, and founded in 1979. Gram Vikas works towards enabling rural communities to lead a dignified life. This is done by building capabilities of village communities, strengthening community institutions and mobilising resources. Gram Vikas works on six focus areas which are water, livelihoods, sanitation & hygiene, habitat & technologies, village institutions and education.
Patangrao Kadam was an Indian politician from the state of Maharashtra. He came from a middle level farmer family in a small village, Sonsal in Sangli district. He previously held the forest ministry in the Maharashtra government. He was also an educationist and was the founder of Bharati Vidyapeeth. Kadam died of renal dysfunction at Mumbai's Lilavati Hospital on 9 March 2018.
Renat Heuberger is the co-founder and CEO of South Pole, a carbon finance consultancy. He has been engaged as a social entrepreneur in the fields of sustainability, climate change and renewable energies since 1999.
KickStart International is a nonprofit social enterprise headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya. KickStart designs and mass-markets climate-smart irrigation technology to smallholder farmers in sub-Saharan Africa, in order to enable a transition from subsistence agriculture to commercial irrigated agriculture. Donor funds are used to design the irrigation pumps, establish supply chains, demonstrate and promote the pumps, and educate farmers on the benefits and methods of small-scale irrigation.
Chitra Jayant Naik (1918–2010) was an Indian educationist, writer, social worker, the chairperson of the Indian Institute of Education and the expert member of the Planning Commission of India. She was the chairperson of the Non-formal Education Committee set up by the Ministry of Human Resource Development and was a member of the National Literacy Mission. The Government of India awarded her the fourth highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Shri in 1986.
Social entrepreneurship in South Asia involves business activities that have a social benefit, often for people at the bottom of the pyramid. It is an emerging area of entrepreneurship that is supported by both the public sector and the private sector.
Kamal Kumbhar is an Indian social entrepreneur, “serial entrepreneur”. She is the founder of Kamal Poultry and Ekta Producer Company.
Anand Balwant Patil is a Marathi and English creative writer, postcolonial, comparatist, culturalist translator –scholar from Maharashtra –Goa, India. Starting with his debut rural novellas and research on the ‘Western Influences on Marathi Drama 1818-1947’ Patil set new trends in rural fiction. His Icchamarn is the compendious epic novel on a village. It is regarded as a masterpiece of gramin (rural) fiction. He is the recipient of four Government of Maharashtra Awards for extraordinary literary works and also other thirteen literary awards. He is the founder of Aranyanand Shikshan, Sahitya va Sanskriti Pratisthan and Anand Granthsagar Prkashan.
MKSSS's Cummins College of Engineering for Women, Nagpur is an RTMNU affiliated college with NAAC (B++) Accreditation in Nagpur, Maharashtra India run by Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha.
No Food Waste (NFW) is a movement turned NGO started by Padmanaban Gopalan and his friends Dinesh manickam and Sudhakar Mohan to get rid of the problem of hunger. The team of No Food Waste scouts for marriage halls, institutions and homes that might have excess food. The food is collected and then repackaged and distributed to the people in need. On an average, 600 plates of food were being provided daily as reported in 2017.
Dr. Jyoti Jayant Gogte is an Indian entrepreneur and academician, most notable for authoring Startup & New Venture Management (2014), a reference textbook on entrepreneurship.
Prin. Dr. P. B. Patil was a member of the Sangli Assembly constituency of the Maharashtra Legislative Assembly (1972-1978), a social reformer who worked for the cause of education and rural development in Maharashtra, India. He was born in a small farmer's family in Chikurde village of Walwa Taluka in Sangli district, Maharashtra, India.
