Changemakers From Public, Private and Development Sector to Underscore Long-Term Support for Strengthening Social Innovation and Scaling up Impact

More than 350 participants from the government, businesses, civil society, and think tanks convened in the city today to attend Catalysing Social Impact 2019, a unique forum to solve complex societal problems aiding the acceleration of social change and attainment of results for vulnerable communities.

Conceptualized by Catalyst Management Services (CMS) and supported by Swasti and Ashraya Hastha Trust, the forum incorporated a collective learning, collaboration and knowledge exchange around four tracks or Solution Circles: Transform 4 Scale, Innovative Financing, #TechTonic, and Social Behaviour Change.

On August 29th and 30th, participation from a multidisciplinary team of leaders working with Amul, Patrick J. McGovern Foundation, World Bank, Azim Premji Philanthropic Initiatives, Godrej, Ford Foundation, Shell Foundation, Levis, Marks & Spencer's, Nokia Siemens will convene in Bengaluru to engage in active discussions in their respective Solution Circles. Although participants from the Solution Circles will be meeting virtually over nine months, then in person, the Face to Face (F2F) forum in August is a chance for them to meet in-person. During this time participants will be affirming long-term support for improving access and outcome around chosen thematic tracks.

Since many societal problems are complex, they either are slow to change or have solutions that have failed to scale. Knowledge sharing and constant engagement through innovation constitute newer opportunities that have the potential to bring about societal change. Each of the four Solution Circles focuses on 2-3 threads and each thread works with real life use cases.

While the forum largely focuses on India and its socio-economic issues, the participants and the benefit of expected outcomes will not be limited to India as solutions can be contextualized to other social development issues around the world. This forum is ideated by Catalyst Management Services (CMS) in partnership with sectoral players who would like to see large scale social impact in a sustainable and cost-effective way.

The results of the forum will be solutions in practice - pilots, frameworks, whitepapers, product, tools and other practical solutions to real-life problems, as decided by Solution Circle participants. All outputs will be widely available online through the Creative Commons - an open-source repository of intellectual property for the common public good. Through this forum, CMS hopes to improve the lives of poor and marginalized communities by solving their problems. Going forward, each year, CMS will aim to bring together the best among the doers, thinkers, and investors to solve at least 10 different problems and taking them to scale, through committed partners.