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Nine win funding for rural innovation projects
Friday, 16 November 2007, 20:30 IST
Chennai: The Rural Innovation Fund (RIF), promoted by Microsoft India among others, has selected nine innovators, who will receive $15,000 (
590,000) each to implement their projects to empower rural India.
Microsoft India has established a RIF corpus of $200,000 to encourage innovations that will benefit rural India.
Besides Microsoft, the other contributors to RIF are Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a public corporation created by the Canadian government to help communities in the developing world find solutions to social, economic and environmental roadblocks.
"The RIF is our attempt to give people tools to manage their economy and ecology, and foster innovation", said IDRC senior programme director Basheerhamad Shadrach.
Each innovator would get a maximum of $15,000 to take the innovation to the grassroots, "and also for scaling up applications", Ram Narayanan, Microsoft's director for emerging segments market development, said here at an interaction with selected innovators.
"We hope that the fund will encourage local IT-based social entrepreneurial endeavours to develop cost effective, practical and innovative applications benefiting society", Narayanan said.
In 2003, eminent scientist M.S. Swaminathan had proposed a rural knowledge movement with the help of ICT (internet and communications technologies).
In 2007, this vision took shape as what was first called 'Mission 2007' and then the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan, with state governments collaborating with 400 technology and NGO partners, aiming to empower 637,000 villages.
"The rural knowledge revolution is likely to have the largest beneficial impact on the physical, economic and social well-being of over 700 million people living in rural India," said Swaminathan.
As a part of this programme, the RIF was set up to help communities with limited access to technology to realise their potential.
The innovation contest will be an annual event, with winners eligible for RIF mentor funding and expertise from M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).
Source: IANS
590,000) each to implement their projects to empower rural India.
Microsoft India has established a RIF corpus of $200,000 to encourage innovations that will benefit rural India.
Besides Microsoft, the other contributors to RIF are Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a public corporation created by the Canadian government to help communities in the developing world find solutions to social, economic and environmental roadblocks.
"The RIF is our attempt to give people tools to manage their economy and ecology, and foster innovation", said IDRC senior programme director Basheerhamad Shadrach.
Each innovator would get a maximum of $15,000 to take the innovation to the grassroots, "and also for scaling up applications", Ram Narayanan, Microsoft's director for emerging segments market development, said here at an interaction with selected innovators.
"We hope that the fund will encourage local IT-based social entrepreneurial endeavours to develop cost effective, practical and innovative applications benefiting society", Narayanan said.
In 2003, eminent scientist M.S. Swaminathan had proposed a rural knowledge movement with the help of ICT (internet and communications technologies).
In 2007, this vision took shape as what was first called 'Mission 2007' and then the Grameen Gyan Abhiyan, with state governments collaborating with 400 technology and NGO partners, aiming to empower 637,000 villages.
"The rural knowledge revolution is likely to have the largest beneficial impact on the physical, economic and social well-being of over 700 million people living in rural India," said Swaminathan.
As a part of this programme, the RIF was set up to help communities with limited access to technology to realise their potential.
The innovation contest will be an annual event, with winners eligible for RIF mentor funding and expertise from M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF).
Source: IANS