Welcome to New ICA
While we are constructing brand new collaborative platform, we would like you to visit current website to learn about important changes. ICA is rebuilding their program entirely differently. We hope you will review our new programs and decide to join here
Indians for Collective Action (ICA) is a San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit group. ICA believes in a secure life for every Indian, in a sustainable environment and a just society. Since our inception in 1968, we have nurtured social activists, spawned many initiatives including Asha for Education and Foundation for Excellence, and supported innovative community-led development projects in over 20 states of India and disbursing over $5.0 million (mostly in last decade). We partner with dedicated social workers and activists in India and the U.S.
What is a primary purpose of this website? This is our intermediate website which precedes our new (in progress) website, that is a collaborative open source platform to inspire, collaborate and empower social sector. ICA has been searching for a best way to engage social sector in India and create right impact in India. They have a more than 4 decade of experience and connection with India’s development center. However, as times have changed we would like to create an open source platform to engage right set of social partners (NGOs and Social Enterprises) and US professionals. Some of the pressing work
background is described here and you can find more details about some of the emerging
roles here.
ICA aims to inspire professional who have spent decent time in corporate world or students specializing in social entrepreneurship, design or international development. Our main aim is to engage young, ideal, and professional in finding sustaining solutions for development sector. Several US-based professionals with a previous start-up, energy institution, semiconductor industry and healthcare solutions went to India this winter to visit SEWA and other leading organizations. And they found the answer – “The best way to use their knowledge would be to allow these leading organizations and help them succeed instead of creating any new models”. Social sectors need lot of selfless givers who should use their professional skills to redesign their social operations to be competitive. Human centric design can play a very important role – case in example “Aravind Eye as a world’s best business case of compassion”.
What is an ultimate objective of such a platform?ICA is building collaborative open source platform aimed at inspiring, collaborating and empowering social sector through human centric design and their professional skills. ICA is looking to provide a best way to reduce poverty. By actively getting engaged with social organizations like SEWA, there is a best chance to come up with sustaining (long lasting) solutions. We aim to strategically connect deeper professional skills gaps within these organizations by substituting professional support. Though this work can be a bridge till “destination” organization develops own internal skill ladder, it is still a necessity. We believe this is a most important element of social leadership building.
What is India Development Circle?
We are excited to start India Development Circle, an inclusive circle with a source of spirit from ServiceSpace. Though we will use the format used by ServiceSpace, idea is to invite a leading guest speakers every month to discuss some of the pressing issues with development and activism for millions of poor. We hope this regular circle will give you an understanding of some of complex challenges and solutions in hope of fostering inspiration to give back to India’s so many voiceless people . Just to remind our first hour is meditation (please arrive in time if you can – if not please arrive peacefully and join the group), the second hour we will be hearing from our invited guests and last hour in dinner in silence and networking. This session will be held in Fremont, CA.
I want to contribute my time, how can join Indians for collective action?
Though there are many different ways to provide a service whether it is directly working with a community in India, community in US or even by creating solutions using your professional skills. We have various programs that you should review it on this website. If this website doesn’t have details you are looking for please send us a note here. In addition, we strongly request you to register your interest here.
Is Indians For Collective Action for Indians Only?
Absolutely not. Service has no boundaries. The word “Indians” is mainly to create a focused based approach to alleviate poverty in India. Time and time again we have seen people making solutions in island and frequently creating a solution that has limited impact. We appreciate everyone from different spectrum and ideas to come collective action movement.
How can I join ICA as a partner and how can I benefit?
ICA for many years have supported many organization to develop their mission, vision, volunteer management, structure, non-profit status, fund raising and donation transfer. If you are a new organization that focuses on mission aligned with ICA, you should not start your approach at once. Instead, ICA recommends that you first build a clear mission which takes several years. Meanwhile, you can work with ICA to compliment your other competing needs. In fact, we are rolling out a new structured program that calls “Friends Of …” equivalent of building organization specific chapter in US. ICA is building a series of tools for online goal management, fund raising, volunteer management and social media strategy. By working with ICA, you will be able to get your operations started earlier.
I am India based social organization. How can we work together?
ICA over last 43 years have generously supported 400 NGOs and we have a very unique success stories. Time has changed now and funding is always needed. We have found that many of the organizations that we have supported continue to have a funding needs by primarily devoting on most of time in serving their members (which obviously has to be a priority) but at the expense of not giving enough attention to operational excellence and self sustainability. Though reasons vary with each organizations, we hope that pro bono professionals from US can fill this gap by initially providing an access to the marketing, design, technology, management or strategic planning. We also can additionally reach out to many professionals in various verticals to help develop your operational vision. This program will allow you to request in-kind “pro bono” service instead of funding. This program has not been fully operational and will take few more months, you can read our description of how we work with SEWA and if you have something similar need in mind, please feel free to write an inspirational background of your organization and describe why such services would be very useful to you. We believing a co-designing is a best way to solve some of the most difficult challenges. Please send your details by e-mail to
Unmesh Sheth or request to write directly in TEAM BLOG by registering
here.
ICA is building collaborative open source platform aimed at inspiring, collaborating and empowering social sector through human centric design and their professional skills. ICA is looking to provide a best way to reduce poverty. By actively understanding challanges of social organizations like SEWA, there is a best chance to come up with a long lasting solutions. We aim to strategically understand deeper professional skills gaps within these organizations and creating a right solution with your deeper professional knowlege and engagement. This is a most important element of social leadership building. We have many excitiing roles from eLearning, information technology, women’s leadership program and sustainable energy. Please Join Here to Create Sustaining Value for Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA).
Technology Volunteers: Open source initiative to empower BOP Organizations
We are building Innovative platform for developing world organizations for Information acquisition and member communication and connection. Many social organizations have members who are distributed across the rural, semi-urban and urban area. Communication with their members is very challenging due to variations in geographical accessibility, language, education and limited information access by different technology devices. Our social enterprise open source platform is a one stop communication platform for social organizations (NGO, social enterprise and government). If you have a strong development experience and worked with PHP or similar platform with experience in CMS such as Drupal and ready to take your knowledge to cloud based application development to millions of developing world BOP members. If you are interested in joining our agile development team, please send us a note at usheth@gmail.com or register here for your interest.
Evening with Author of Carbon Dharma
On April 24, we are having a second monthly “India Development Circle” program. Modeled after Wednesdays, we will start with 30 min of silent meditation, then invite an inspiring guest speaker to share their insights on development in India, and end with some dinner.
Our guest speaker is Dr. Sailesh Rao, author of Carbon Dharma will talk about the Nexus between Food, Energy and Development which tells the what kind of future we should shape. The future looks truly bleak if we continue on our current trajectories for much longer. Half the forests on Earth have been destroyed. Three quarters of the ocean fisheries are exhausted. And half this destruction occurred within one generation, in the past 50 years, equalling the destruction wrought by the previous 500 generations of human beings combined.
The presentation will explore the nexus between changing food habits, energy consumption and development in the context of India. Drawing upon the ancient Indian concept of “Dharma” or “Right Action,” it will explore why a concerted attitudinal shift in affluent communities is essential to uplift the lives of the poor. While changing the world is about changing ourselves, effecting social change requires such concerted action.
Circle | April 24 Tuesday| 7-10 p.m. | 280 Chantecler Dr, Fremont, CA 94539
To join us, please RSVP here. As we get closer to the date, we’ll email you the logistical details and some thoughtful readings as well.
Sailesh Rao is the Executive Director of the non-profit, Climate Healers. An Electrical Engineer by training with a Ph. D. from Stanford University in Stanford, CA, Sailesh switched careers and became deeply immersed in the various environmental crises facing humanity after some life changing events. He is the author of the 2011 book, “Carbon Dharma: The Occupation of Butterflies.”
