Jeevika campaign office of Centre for Civil Society in Jaipur hosted a group from Leaders’ Quest (http://www.leadersquest.org/) to understand its work on policy advocacy on Monday, April 23, 2012. Leaders’ Quest, a social enterprise committed to improving the quality and impact of leaders around the world delivers unique experiential programmes to integrate social purpose with performance at the core of their organisations. LQ mentors high calibre leaders, from boardrooms to grassroots communities, who are changing the world around them. This quest was tailor made for Bain & Company (http://www.bain.com/). 11 Business leaders of the company representing South East Asia, Australia, United States of America, France, Belgium, South Africa and South Korea participated in the visit.
The objective of the visit was to understand:
- The informal economy, providing livelihoods and employment for millions.
- Policy change and implementation – the story of getting legislation passed in Rajasthan and the challenges of getting new policies implemented.
- Personal perspective on the informal economy from street vendors in Jaipur markets.
The visit lasted for more than three hours. The visit started with a brief presentation on Jeevika: Law, Liberty & Livelihood campaign work by Mr Amit Chandra, Jeevika National Coordinator wherein he explained in detail the idea behind the campaign as well as the initiatives of the campaign and how those initiatives helped the campaign reaching its goal. The presentation was followed by questions and answers from the LQ participants. We also had three street vendor representatives during the presentation for interaction with LQ participants.
After having brief understanding about the issues related with street vending and the campaign work, the LQ participants visited one street market to witness and understand the challenges. After the visit the participants once again had further interactions with campaign team to understand the connection between grassroot issues and larger economic growth. The LQ participants were fascinated by the insights to the informal (moving to formal) economy, civil society and its relationship with government and motivation of the campaign team for the work and leadership style.
Here is brief profile of participants from Bain & Capital who participated visited the campaign work through Leaders’ Quest programme:
Here are some pictures of the visit:
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- Business Leaders Interacting with Street Vendor Leaders
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- Amit Chandra Giving Presentation
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- Business Leaders Interacting with Street Vendors
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- Business Leaders in Street Market
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- Business Leaders in Discussion
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- Business Leaders during Interaction with Amit Chandra
