Excited to Join the Team!
By Prabha Dublish, Undergraduate student at Babson College and Undergraduate Scholar at The Lewis Institute.
The first time I heard about The Lewis Institute was at an info session for Babson College at my high school. I had always been very passionate about social innovation, but wasn’t sure how I could follow that passion in college. Babson College was the first place I had heard of that was well-renowned and had a specific center for social innovation on campus, so I knew this was the place for me.
When I arrived on campus, I was so excited to get involved. I was so struck by how committed everyone here was to creating positive change. I got to spend my first year at Babson working at in the Youth Entrepreneurial division at The Lewis Institute. Here I helped to organize programs that involved inspiring youth in the city to become more involved in entrepreneurship and I loved every minute of it. As a first year, I was thrilled to get an internship that allowed to me to do some real work where I learned many new skills.
This year as an Undergraduate Scholar at The Lewis Institute, I am so excited to be helping with Good Business Fridays, where companies come on campus to speak to students about how they create social value in their businesses. This is an amazing opportunity to not only learn more about The Lewis Institute, but start to understand as well what does social innovation really mean. I hope to help make social innovation an idea that more people want to become involved in because it is often an overlooked concept.
With that mentality in mind, I spent my summer traveling throughout Northern India to talk to women living in villages who had started small-scale ventures. It was incredible to me how the increase in businesses had improved the community drastically. On almost every street corner there would be a small business selling clothes, spices, cosmetics, etc. Rather than living in mud huts, many of the villagers now had their own homes. Through the gained confidence of having to leave their homes and run their business, many of these women took up social issues like female feticide and alcoholism.
You can read some of these stories here. My favorite was when a group of these women came together and tore down an illegal liquor store because they were tired of men getting intoxicated and harassing women. I was amazed by how much confidence and strength these women had from starting their own ventures. You could tell how fearless they were.
I am so looking forward to continuing to explore my passion for social innovation this year with The Lewis Institute. With an amazing team and incredible events planned, be sure to stay tuned!