StudyMall nominated for SWAG 2016 Awards in education category

15Sep 2016 by Thinksharp Foundation No Comments

Thinksharp Foundation’s project “StudyMall” was nominated in education category for the SWAG (Social Welfare & Growth) Awards, 2016 initiative by The CSR Journal http://thecsrjournal.in/ . We received the appreciation and participation trophy by chief guest Mr.Sushilkumar Shinde, Former Union Minister, Government of India at this prestigious event .

The CSR Journal is an online portal which connects the NGO / Social enterprises on a single portal. And also they connect this NGO/Social enterprises to the companies/corporate who are ready to help them through CSR . However the work of The CSR Journal goes much beyond that, they motivate, inspire and act as social change makers themselves by putting all this social stories together. The CSR Journal team is acting like a catalyst to speed the good work done in society.

The CSR Journal put together SWAG Awards this year which was an absolute source of motivation and inspiration to all the NGO and social enterprises working across India. For the SWAG awards nominations were invited from all over India and Thinksharp Foundation was one of the proud nominees in education sector. (http://thecsrjournal.in/redefining-csr-the-csr-journal-swag-awards-2016/)

SWAG Awards had following categories Education & Skill Training, Sports , Environment & Agriculture, Women Empowerment & Child Welfare and Health & Sanitation.

In the education category there were two other organisations that we were privileged to share stage with, Let’s Do Some Good Foundation ( http://www.ldsg.in/) and the Nudge Foundation (http://www.thenudge.org/) . We are honored to have had chance to stand along them as they are doing fantastic job in education category.

The event was a grand success which was held at The Leela Hotel, Mumbai. This was perfect event because of great hospitality and co-ordination by The CSR Journal team. There were special performances that added to the event like LGBT community-based dance group, ‘Dancing Queens’ performance, stand-up comedy by artist Kenneth Sebastian, Songs by ‘saMcara’ group on social responsibility and ethics.

ThinkSharp Foudnation’s StudyMall project was shared on the platform at the event in presence of all dignitaries, judges from social sector and corporate. The video featured about StudyMall highlighted how we are helping 3 villages of Maharashtra and 1500 rural children read, learn and play by setting up StudyMall.

In the final round all the nominees were called upon stage and had to answer question form the judges. The judges for SWAG Awards were Rohit Misra, CEO, Starkey, Shrikant Sinha, CEO, NASSCOMM, Sanjay Behl, CEO, Raymond, Vivek Talwar, Chief Sustainability Officer, TATA Power, Prerana Langa, CEO, Yes Foundation, Pearl Tiwari, President, Ambuja Cement Ltd and Naghma Mulla, COO, Edelgive Foundation.

Our founder Mr.Santosh represented us on stage and he was asked question by Jury at the final round during event on stage . The Jury for us was Mr.Shrikant Sinha who posed question how do we motivate children to come to StudyMall. Our founder always having a witty response correctly said “we do not need to motivate them, similar to a situation when a village gets road people start using it, when we set up StudyMall children are already motivated to use this better educational facility provided to them.” Another question then came was “How do we keep children’s interest continued in using StudyMall”. Santosh explained that StudyMall is ongoing project to keep children interested in coming to StudyMall and using to learn and grow, we continuously upgrade it by adding more educational infrastructure like digital projector, educational tablets, toys etc.

We are truly thankful to The CSR Journal and especially Miss Pooja Domadia from The CSR Journal team for her continuous motivation and support. We are more motivated to work towards making StudyMall available to each needed village of Maharashtra.

It was an wonderful opportunity to meet other NGO who are doing tremendous good work too mention a few is Sundara – bringing hygiene by making available recycled soaps (http://sundarafund.org/) Gabriel project making women empowerment and child empowerment possible (http://www.gabrielprojectmumbai.org/) and then the much needed and my favorite project dealing with menstrual issues Indian Development Foundation for their Project Hygiene 12 ( http://www.idf.org.in/project—ph12.html) and the one which I found very simple, humble and yet most effective project I liked dealing child development of slum and poor kids through sports OSCAR Foundation ( http://www.oscar-foundation.org/ ).

Please keep visiting The CSR Journal to feel positive and to find something that you re passionate about. Also you can get connected with such wonderful people and organisations at http://thecsrjournal.in/