Mumbai: The grand finale of third Global Citizen Leadership (GCL) program saw 67 innovative projects on issues related to rural, retail, finance, healthcare, IT, Process & systems during the presentation that took place at WeSchool, Mumbai recently. GCL is a transformational programme that equips students with tools to apply their talent and skills in the real-world context while providing them with leadership, innovation and inspiration to make a difference in society. This unique program is designed by WeSchool in collaboration with Centre for Creative Leadership (CCL), a top-ranked, global provider of executive education that cultivates creative leadership—the capacity to achieve more than imagined by thinking and acting beyond boundaries. In the third year of its inception, students from WeSchool’s fulltime PGDM programs, Business Design, Retail, E-Biz, Healthcare and Rural Management (Emerging Economies) underwent the GCL program this year.

With a number of top corporates like Future Group, Raymonds, ICICI, Axis Capital, Soul flower, Motilal Oswal, Reliance Jio, Edelweiss etc stepping in to share their pain-points which turned into problem statements that the students had to work on, it compelled them to step out of the comfort zones of classroom learning, look closely at the fast-paced realities of the environment and come out with strong solutions that had the potential to be taken to a higher level. These projects aim at a multiplicity of sectors that vary from rural, healthcare, innovation, social issues, human resources, urban issues, infrastructure, process and systems & IT and energy.

With projects as complex in terms of diversity like ‘Gap analysis between consumer aspirations and existing services in suburban railway systems’, ‘To design and test a process for e-enabled learning for village children’, ‘To redefine Municipal council’s role in achieving the objectives of Swachh Bharat’, ‘Simplifying KYC norms for Mutual Fund investors’, ‘Making portfolio management attractive for retail investors’, ‘Viability of Tea Cafes’ and many more, the initial three months were spent on intensive research, project planning and defining opportunity space while the next three in developing solutions, prototyping and preparing funding pitches. The projects presented at the finale were the outcome of a five month long journey of learning, observing, empathizing with stakeholders, ideating, prototyping, and finally arriving at a suggested solution for an ‘opportunity’ space, shared with them at the point of embarkation.

Prof Dr Uday Salunkhe, Group Director, WeSchool, while speaking on the occasion said, “During GCL, students are thrown into a real life setting while they still have the opportunity to fall back on the guidance of the faculty and mentorship of industry veterans. The thought behind the projects is to adopt a human-centric approach by using design thinking that will also facilitate the mentoring of future leaders that are self-motivated and industry ready. The expertise of the CCL Team in leadership development space worldwide has played a crucial role in successful completion of these projects with such outstanding outcomes. This endeavour has not only changed the lenses of our MBA students but also tested their ability to accept failures and turn it into opportunities for higher degrees of success for all the stakeholders.”

Top corporates like Mahindra Finance and Eureka Forbes have expressed interest in working with projects that aim to alleviate the pain points of common man. While Mahindra Finance has taken the lead with its interest in the project titled, ‘Financial Literacy For Developing A Sustainable Financial Value Chain For Rural Resident’, Eureka Forbes is interested in furthering ‘Exploring Grassroots’, a project on sanitation and personal hygiene, discussions are on with others who would like to take up similar rural-centric projects on alternative energy sources, healthcare, hygiene engagement etc. These corporates will mentor the student teams that have developed the solutions during the pilot project and also consider investing if required, to take them to a fruitful end. With an active Venture Mentoring Cell at WeSchool, Global Citizen Leadership program is poised to result not only in internships and placement opportunities, but boost up entrepreneurial initiatives of its young MBA students with corporate investments and mentorship.

Source : Lokesh Shastri