US Merrimack Valley to study Hubli rural development models

US Merrimack Valley to study Hubli rural development models
The Hindu BusinessLine HUBLI, JAN. 16:

The successful social entrepreneurship models and concepts of Hubli Sandbox will be incorporated in Merrimack Valley Sandbox, said Mr Todd Fry, Executive Director of Merrimack Valley Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Sandbox is an environment where fresh ideas get incubated and build a meaningful relationship with like-minded peers, learn from senior leaders and gain access to opportunities that will help them grow.

In north Karnataka, the Deshpande Centre for Social Entrepreneurship (DCSE) has been operating Hubli Sandbox, which comprises five north Karnataka districts – Dharwad, Belgaum, Gadag, Haveri and Uttar Kannada.

In the US, Deshpande foundation has helped Merrimack Valley of Massachusetts, including Lowell, Lawrence and Haverhill to develop and enhance an innovation eco system in urban areas.

A team of some 30 professionals from Merrimack Valley are in Hubli to participate in the “Development Dialogue-2012” and, thereby, learn from the successful experiments done by various organisations in the sandbox region.

Mr Fry said the team was in Hubli to understand the underlying strategies adapted by the organisations in their successful ventures.

To a question on whether they would be replicating the successful models, he said that they were not looking at replicating the models as the features of the Merrimack Valley Sandbox region were totally different from the North West Karnataka sandbox region.

“Here Deshpande Foundation is running a LEAD (Leaders Accelerating Development) programme, under which, young leaders take up social projects and we have a similar programme running in our region. What we plan to do is to understand the strategies and try to adapt them to address issues in our region”, he said.

Mr Fry clarified that they would not be interested in taking up philanthropic activities as there were already several such initiatives going on in US. “We will be focusing on higher education and high schools. The stress will be more on capacity building”, he said.

The Senior Programme Manager of the Centre, Mr David Parker, said that the objective of their visit was to not only to learn from the successful initiatives but also to help social entrepreneurship initiatives in the Hubli sandbox area.

The President of New Brunswick University (Canada), Mr Eddy Campbell, already Pond-Deshpande Centre for Innovation and Entrepreneurship had been set up by the university to take up similar work like Deshpande Centre for Social Entrepreneurship in Hubli.

“We are looking at creating more opportunities for the youths”, he said.

anil.u@thehindu.co.in