Genesis
Visaara has its roots in Aritra, the Leadership Accelerator Program for Senior leaders in the impact space. Five years ago, the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, Phicus Social Solutions and Dr. Reddy's Foundation came together to envision Aritra to address an urgent capacity building deficit in India's social sector.
Historically, capacity building has been an area of significant underinvestment in the social sector due to a variety of reasons including project based funding, inadequate focus on leadership and organizational sustainability and so on. Aritra was our first step towards bridging this gap.
.png)
Aritra Learnings
Over 3 batches of Aritra, covering 61 leaders over 3 years, we learned a lot through the engagement with the participants and a galaxy of ecosystem stakeholders. Our key takeaways were - capacity building continues to be a gap; leadership development at all levels is a crying need; organization building is not focused on; partnerships and collaborations are not understood and leveraged enough; and institutional and networks' capacity building is scarce.
Aritra 3 year learnings
Visaara has been created to help impact organizations and stakeholders build the capabilities of themselves, their teams, their organizations, their communities and their larger ecosystem, thereby helping them achieve social impact as they have envisioned it.
Strengthening capability for social impact
Early Inputs on Visaara
On January 24th 2020, we invited a few 'friends of Aritra' to a meeting at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB) to share with them progress on Aritra, our learnings and to 'test drive' Visaara.
The meeting was very well attended and the validation as well as inputs we got have helped us immensely in shaping Visaara. The meeting minutes are appended alongside.
Visaara's Purpose
Visaara Elements
ROLE BASED LEARNING JOURNEYS
People are the heart beat of social impact. Visaara offers specifically designed and created / curated role based learning journeys for critical actors in the impact space. We will address all key roles in the social impact ecosystem spanning social enterprises to Government to NGOs and Donors / Investors / CSR on the one hand, and covering CXO to front line workers. These will be offered as pure online learning journeys and for a few roles, also as blended learning programs. We will constantly be adding new roles so do keep checking back!
.png)
ONLINE LEARNING
We are creating and curating a vibrant set of online content spanning - Webinars offered by IIMB faculty, Podcasts with Industry experts, Case studies showcasing successes and learnings, Research reports, MOOCs offered by IIMB and much more. For your ease, these will be presented both thematically as well as aligned to specific roles to make your access more intuitive. These resources are freely available for everyone, with a free account.
.png)
RESEARCH
There is a serious lack of relevant research in the impact and development spaces which bring to the fore an India perspective. Visaara will address this in two ways - through fundamental research which will bring forth models and frameworks and action research which will showcase field-based learnings. This research will focus on the following themes - Leadership, organization building, institution building, networks and collaborations, integrated impact models and models for scaling social impact.
VISAARA CONNECT
A key leverage point for the Aritra participants was the extensive network of people that the program plugged them into. Visaara will serve as the bridge to bring together various actors in the impact space - for mutual problem solving, growth collaborations, expertise and advice, hyperlocal engagements and so on. Two solutions anchor Visaara connect at the outset - Connects with experts and Communities of Practice. Check back here for more updates soon!
CONVENINGS & ADVOCACY
Visaara will bring together various actors in the impact ecosystem through focused convenings which aim to synergise and showcase varied viewpoints on critical issues which impact all of us / are of topical concern to us who work in the social impact space. It is our goal to influence relevant policies thereby helping all players amplify social impact.
Program Directors
Prof. Vasanthi Srinivasan
Professor, Org Behavior & HRM
Chair - Digital Learning
vasanthi[dot]srinivasan[at]iimb[dot]ac[dot]in
Prof. Sourav Mukherji
Professor, Org Behavior & HRM
Chair, Centre for Teaching and Learning
Chair, Centre for Management Communication
IIMB Chair of Excellence
souravm[at]iimb[dot]ac[dot]in
Dr. Vandana Nadig Nair
Founder Director - Phicus Social Solutions
vandana[at]phicus[dot]org