The Social Impact Lab is running its award-winning Spark India programme again this year, taking ten students to work with three social ventures in Mumbai. Students were recruited from a strong applicant pool of 126 undergraduates across the university.
The Spark India 2016 cohort with student partners
This year’s successful applicants will be working with three incredible organisations: Atma, supporting education focused social ventures, Safecity, protecting women through crowdsourcing, and Dharavi Diary, empowering girls in Asia’s biggest slum through the power of coding.
The project with Dharavi Diary sees the programme teaming up with University of Southampton spin-out BluPoint. Students will be taking a BluPoint hub, donated by alumni, to help empower girls in Dharavi, with technology based in the slums. A BluPoint hub is an innovative device, which creates a portable local solar powered network that enables computer, tablets and mobile users to access life-changing information and services free at the point of use.
Dr Pathik Pathak, Social Impact Lab director, said:
Spark India has always been a unique and distinctive leadership experience, but through our collaboration with BluPoint our students can help to scale the impact of innovative social ventures.
Professor Colin Grant, Vice-President (International), said:
India is a major priority for the University. In our strong engagement with India, we are seeking maximum impact in research, policy interventions and education. Spark India is perfectly aligned with that big impact agenda.
Find out more information about the Spark India and the Social Impact Lab.
