Sristi Gyan Kendra

Contributing to social development, finding time for the needy and helping them in some way or the other is a thought that most of us have deep within us, though we seldom make a move in achieving the same. We joined the Social Development cell at IIM Rohtak, thinking we could make some move in this regard though we were still doubtful about the contributions we could make. But once we walked in for the first meeting of the SDP cell, we realized, this is it. The energy, enthusiasm and commitment evident among the other members instilled in us the extra confidence to work towards it.

As part of our first venture we visited Mr. Kamal Jeet who is closely associated with the Sristi Gyan Kendra (SGK) NGO situated at Rohtak, Haryana. He was very friendly and approachable, giving us a warm welcome. Interaction with him was really an enriching experience and he explained to us the basic functioning of SGK. The basic funding of SGK comes through volunteers and membership fees money from messaging contracts. The mission statement of SGK is pursuing mission of documenting & disseminating knowledge related to sustainable technologies, green grassroots Innovations and Traditional Knowledge. The basic functioning of the NGO started in 1997,when volunteers of Honey Bee Network – Haryana (a group of like-minded individuals, innovators, farmers, scholars, academicians, policy makers, entrepreneurs and non-governmental organizations (NGOs)) started scouting and documenting Traditional Knowledge & Grassroots Innovations. The efforts towards the same had been well pursued by its dedicated members and in year 2007 SGK was formally incorporated at Rohtak, Haryana with support from National Innovation Foundation. Some other areas of work by SGK are Intellectual property rights protection along with support processes like business incubation.

Something that interested us the most was the innovative ways in which they managed to reach their target audience, which include a two wheeler, with a modified sidecar, being converted into a mobile office with their focus on systematic augmentation of knowledge among societies and hunting unacknowledged minds. These methods have definitely increased the efficiency of the organiser in identifying the innovators. The newsletter Saksham which started distribution in 2009 is another achievement that Mr Kamal and team have to their name with a distribution of over 20000. Plans are being implemented to make SGK self sustained and an Innovation Promotions Company is also in the pipeline. The members of SGK also focus on business creativity improvement with case studies for guidelines. SGK also has some projects running like the Agribusiness Knowledge Centre Project which was conceptualized, with an idea to develop backend & forward linkages to support farming community, in the era of rapidly changing Agri Food System. A part of SGK is focused on making farmers understand government projects. SMS is used as a method for the same put into practice in connection with Kisan mobile information centre having around 4500 registered farmers. SGK also co-ordinates with Kisan sanchar.com which is a content management system.

SGK is now being involved in a new nationwide project, Digital Panchayat. This project is being taken up by SGK for the state of Haryana. Under this they plan to take the villages online, by setting up websites for them, detailing the village history, population statistics and other details. This would help the villages place themselves in front to a large audience. SGK has requested that we take up the documentation of the villages as a first step to this activity. We were really happy to know that we could contribute to the organisation and that too in a developmental activity as big as this. We eagerly await the beginning of our journey.