eNGO Challenge Award South Asia Grand Jury was successfully held on 18th & 19th August 2015 in Puducherry. This year we received 225 nominations across six categories. The virtual Jury members managed to filter 70 valid entries for the final evaluation by the Grand Jury. The Grand Jury brought together 13 influential people to select and shortlist from a list of 70 Nominations divided into 11 categories as per their expertise. 
 
The Jury discussed all the shortlisted nominations in all the categories. A final result emerged through a voting system. In all, the Grand Jury selected Winners, Special Mentions, Juror’s Mention from the list of 70 nominations. The intense discussion on each nomination and the voting activity brought out, not only the top nominations but also the strength of collective wisdom of the Jurors while debating the aspects of the nominations.

Meet the Jurors

Osama ManzarOsama Manzar – Founder & Director, Digital Empowerment Foundation (Moderator: eNGO Challenge South Asia Award Jury)

Osama Manzar is a convert social entrepreneur spearheading the mission to overcome the information barrier between India’s rural sector, and the so-called developed society, through Digital Empowerment Foundation (DEF) – the not-for-profit organization founded to accomplish the mission. He is a Member, Working Group, Internet Governance Forum of Ministry of Communication & IT and was a Member, Task Force on Growth of IT, ITES & Electronics HW Manufacturing Industry, Ministry of Comm& IT, India.

Jeri CurryJeri Curry – President & CEO, Enset

Jeri leads the strategic partnerships and global communications for Enset and spends the majority of her time looking to connect with global partners and NGOs in all corners of the world. Jeri’s background in strategic marketing, media and international development is extensive. She holds a B.S. in Journalism from the University of Colorado and has worked with the Washington Post, Internews, Discovery Communications, Deloitte, MCI and Save the Children. She trains for marathons in her spare time, enjoys spending time with her two teenage boys and is thrilled when technology supports the global good.

IMG_0316 - CopyGayatri Subramaniam – Convener and Chief Programme Executive, National Foundation for Corporate Social Responsibility (NFCSR), Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs (IICA):

With an academic sand industrial experience of more than 30 years, Gayatri has been associated with Indian Institute of Corporate Affairs since its inception. Her main area of work is to contribute towards policy advisory service and undertake capacity building and knowledge dissemination initiatives in the Corporate Social Responsibility. She has been a part of the evolvement of the new legislation on CSR in India representing IICA at various national stakeholders’ consultations. She has also represented IICA at various international forums. She is the Convener for NFCSR – a unique platform created for Government, Corporates and NGOs for taking up development and sustainable initiatives at a national level.   At present, she is heading the Implementation Agencies Hub of IICA and in her personal capacity, she is on various advisory committees of leading Corporates and NGOs.

AmitabhAmitabh Singhal – Board Member, PIR. ORG

He currently sits on the Board of .ORG, the Public Interest Registry, based in Reston, Virginia. He is the Director of Telxess Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd. and Vcon Services Ltd. He was a Founder and former President of Internet Service Providers Association of India. He also was a founder, Board Director and CEO of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). He helped conceptualize and set up NIXI as a public private partnership between ISPAI and Department of Information Technology, Government of India and was involved in restructuring NIXI as an autonomous Registry and Regulator of the .IN Domain

(Indian ccTLD), including its commercial launch, drafting and implementing the INDRP, and appointment of Registrars, etc. Amitabh is the Director of Telxess Consulting Services Pvt. Ltd. and Vcon Services Ltd. He was a Founder and former President of Internet Service Providers Association of India. He also was a founder, Board Director and CEO of National Internet Exchange of India (NIXI). He helped conceptualize and set up NIXI as a public private partnership between ISPAI and Department of Information Technology, Government of India and was involved in restructuring NIXI as an autonomous Registry and Regulator of the .IN Domain (Indian ccTLD), including its commercial launch, drafting and implementing the INDRP, and appointment of Registrars, etc. He was the spokesperson of India’s ISP industry for over a decade, contributing many articles over the years in various publications and journals, and was a speaker & presenter at various forums, including the IGF. He helped shape public policies in the telecommunication sphere as a member of various governmental and industry committees, expert groups and panels.

IMG_0402Kumar Anurag Pratap – CSR Leader, Capgemini

Anurag brings with him more than 17 years of diversified experience in CSR, Community Development, Project Management / Implementation, Capacity Planning, and Resource Management. Started with social research space, Anurag in last 17 years have worked with grassroot agencies, Donor agencies, UN Agency and Corporate. On thematic front, he has managed multiple projects on Agriculture, Tribal Development, Rural Development, Livelihoods, Disaster Mitigation, Women& Child Protection. Anurag had imparted Policy advocacy on NREGS, Tribal Rights, Water Rights for marginalized communities, Education for All, Child Protection with special emphasis on child labour. His core competency lies in long term strategic planning & vision building among diverse stakeholder groups. He specializes in leading organisation towards change and transition management in social development space.

Anurag holds a Master’s degree in Rural Development from Xavier Institute of Social Service, post which he completed his Diploma in Development Leadership from Coady International Institute in 2006.  He had earlier graduated in Sociology from Benaras Hindu University.

rajenRajen Varada – CEO, Open Knowledge Community

RajenVarada is an ICT practitioner since 1995 and continues to be actively engaged in designing and implementing proof of concept solutions for rural development using technology and in particular ICT. He has developed solutions for health & early childhood care: (SisuSamrakshak UNICEF), disaster: (SMS4help – Solution Exchange), district e-governance: (Parishkaram&Samadhan – Govt of AP& West Bengal) and most recently ‘Labnet” a migrant labour tracking and services portal. He is actively involved for the past nine years in study, evaluation and mentoring ICT innovations which impact the social sector. Rajen has been one of the thinkers behind movements like public sector software in India and actively support community ownership of technology – from community radio, community TV to open source applications.

IMG_0350Rajashree Natarajan – Chief Operating Officer, Cognizant Foundation

RajashreeNatarajan is Chief Operating Officer, Cognizant Foundation. In this role, Rajashree focuses on designing an overarching strategy and charter for Cognizant Foundation and for crafting relevant goals, policies for all programs, develop and manage the CF annual budget for CF programs and operations, communication with and manage relationship with a broad set of stakeholders including Cognizant location CSR committees, NGOs, beneficiaries, Industry bodies and local/ national level govt agencies. She also focus on streamlining the governance processes and technology adoption in Cognizant Foundation operations. She also leads the Cognizant efforts in Digital literacy & and facilitates Cognizant participation in IT Probono work for social cause.

Rajashree is an industry veteran with over 24 years in the IT industry, Rajashree is thought leader in multiple domains including innovative software engineering, quality processes, enterprise collaboration and Knowledge Management. She has conceptualised, incubated and delivered many products and solutions in these domains.

Prior to her current role, Rajashree was Vice President at Cognizant Technology Solutions. She has played multiple leadership roles throughout her career at Cognizant spanning large program delivery and P&L, product solutions, process engineering, quality and knowledge management. As head of the Process Tools and Knowledge Management function in Cognizant, Rajashree played a key role in defining processes, developing platforms and products such as Cognizant 2.0 and Workport suite, to support globalization of service delivery and institutionalizing enterprise-wide structured knowledge management. Rajashree received the prestigious Cognizant Leadership Award for her visionary role in the creation of Cognizant 2.0 platform. As the head of Quality, she has successfully led Cognizant towards CMMi Level 5 certification and has institutionalized Six Sigma best practices to ensure greater delivery excellence.

Prior to Cognizant, Rajashree has had stints at Tata Consultancy Services, D-Square and Kanbay Resources Inc U.K.

Rajashree obtained her master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. She is also a Six Sigma Black Belt. Rajashree has played an active role in the NASSCOM Quality Forum and the CII Knowledge Management community. In her leisure, Rajashree spends time with NGOs and schools, actively contributing in the field of education.

PranavPranav Kumar Choudhary, Director-Operations, Dr. Reddy’s Foundation

As a development professional, with 12 years of experience Mr. Choudhary hasworked on themes like  Social Research, Disaster Risk Reduction, HIV &AIDS, Child Rights & Livelihood (including Skill Development)  and also got opportunity to lead  Change Management, Leadership (Arbinger) Intervention in Organisation  and to manage large scale programs. He has been nominated as working group member by West Bengal State Rural Development Agency to develop their State Skill Development Program.

He did his Graduation and Post-Graduation in Sociology from Banaras Hindu University and Management Program (PGDRM) from Xavier Institute of Management and  a certified   Arbinger   trainer (on Leadership).  Worked with NCR Research, ActionAid International in past and currently heading operations in Dr. Reddy’s Foundation as Director- Operations. Other than this he had also been given the responsibility to provide leadership support and coordinate Foundation’s activities  in the current transition phase (in the absence of CEO).

MeeraMeera Chaudhary – Ecologist & Film Maker

MeeraChaudhary has a background in Management &Enviornmental science. A marketing professional by training , she is a documentary filmmaker by choice & carried a decade of experience in both Corporate and Social sector. She is the creative head and Director at New Stream Media. NSM has produced several hard hitting documentaries on the issues of human rights, politics & women. Recently she Co-directed a documentary on Muzaffarnagar riots titled ‘En Dino Muzaffarnagar’. She believes in activism through films and volunteering with several advocacy platforms like Jan Awaz, steps for change. Insha Allah! She will make feature films in future.

GopinathGopinath Parayil – Founder, The Blue Yonder

Gopi founded The Blue Yonder in 2004 as part of his journey to promote the unique river valley civilisation of Nila in Kerala (Bharatapuzha). A keen promoter of sustainability and a believer in social entrepreneurship, he transformed The Blue yonder into a travel company that creates a positive impact in both hosts’ and guests’ lives. A pioneer in Responsible Tourism, he identifies projects and destinations to work with and then transforms them into immersive travel experiences. With his untiring efforts he has created such destinations across India, from Kerala to Rajasthan. He is a founding board member of Asian Ecotourism Network and one of the judges for the prestigious National Geographic World Legacy Awards. Gopi co-founded the Responsible Tourism Networking to bring together like-minded people in the travel industry. He also represents The Blue Yonder in its capacity as official Sustainable Tourism partner at ITB Berlin and ITB Asia.

deeptiDeepti Vikas Dutt Leader – Government & Smarter Cities, IBM Global Business Services

With over 15 years of work experience, Deepti leads IBM’s service delivery for Government and Smarter Cities domain. She has a track record of converting abstract ideas into field implementable solutions and systems driven processes. She specializes in process transformation and complex program management; she has many first-of-a-kind project implementations under her belt. At a personal level, she is passionate about contributing her bit to the transformation that the Nation in undergoing, and had chosen in-between to work with the Government on the largest transformation project undertaken thus far – Aadhaar. She is now focussing on “Smarter Planet” initiatives of IBM and has already delivered the first-of-a-kind smart city solution spanning across domains such as public safety, utilities, transportation, city operations and participative governance.

Prior to her current engagement with IBM, Deepti has done a 3-years stint with Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Planning Commission, GoI, where she was part of the strategy team to operationalize UIDAI Vision into field implementable solutions. As part of the select members from the Industry that comprised UIDAI’s Program Management Unit, Deepti was involved in conceptualizing and setting up strategy, processes and polices for enrolments, authentication, data updates, eKYC etc. She was one of the key anchor persons behind Aadhaar online authentication services and liaised extensively with ecosystem members to evolve the same. In this capacity, she conceived, designed and executed various Proof of Concepts and other field studies to characterize complex variables associate with online biometric authentication and to establish Aadhaar authentication service standards.In her previous stint at IBM, Deepti was part of the team that started telecom transformation in the country. As part of Airtel-IBM and other telecom engagements, she contributed significantly to converting business requirements & processes to IT capabilities & processes.

Deepti holds a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology and a Master’s degree in Business Management. She holds industry certifications such as PMP & ITIL Expert.

IMG_0333 - CopySubrahmanyam Ivatury – CEO & Co-Founder, Social Convergence

Subrahmanyam Ivatury is the CEO and Cofounder of Social Convergence. He works with corporates and help them with CSR strategy to implementation and impact measurement and dove-tail that with employee volunteering programs. He also works closely with not-for-profits and help them to leverage digital technologies and help them to bring volunteering efforts to enhance capability and capacity.

He is an technology industry veteran and have worked in leading Tech companies in both India and abroad. His last corporate jobs being head of Oracle CGBU consulting for Asiapac and Japan and prior to that with Satyam Computers as senior vice president. With strong hands on experience in consulting, program management , technology, telecom he is now focused on bringing that experience into the social sector and corporate CSR programs.

AshokVinoth K Anurag Praumar Ethiraj – Director of Vocational Education, Viswa Bharati Vidyodaya Trust, Gudalur, TheNilgiris, Tamil Nadu

Vinoth has more than 12 years of experience in semi-conductor companies. He worked in several leadership and management positions in Intel, Motorola, Freescale and Synopsys before he chose to follow his passion in contributing to social and environmental issues. He is currently the Director of Vocational Education at ViswaBharatiVidyodaya Trust, Gudalur (near Ooty), Tamil Nadu, workingwith indigenous people in the Nilgiris district. He holds a Bachelors in Engineering from National Institute of Technology, Trichy.

AshokAshok Panda – Co-Convener, Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH)

He has been involved with INTACH, Pondicherry for the last 15 years. He acts as the coordinator and project manager. His work includes conducting heritage walks,tourism promotion projects in Pondicherry and Tamil Nadu as well as raising finances to support the activities like solid waste management. He also handles the management and implementation of heritage restoration and urban environment projects in Tranquebar (Tharangambadi).