A social entrepreneurship course with a grassroots perspective. Learning occurs in rural and urban communities where students gain a first-hand understanding of the on-the-ground realities of social problems and the challenges of solving them.  Using a "field as classroom" experiential learning approach, students learn how social entrepreneurship is used to address social and economic injustices at the base of the pyramid.

Throughout this course, students work in teams with Indian counterparts from local urban universities and rural colleges. Mixed cohorts of students visit and work with social enterprises, nonprofit organizations and corporate social responsibility programs and their different approaches to tackle social, cultural and environmental issues in across sectors: health, water, sanitation, education, employment, etc.

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rural Immersion

In rural areas, students take a deep dive into poverty, learning to use best practice frameworks and expert tools to examine its causes, effects and costs. Students on this course study with “lower” and “backward” caste Indian students. Together, they conduct primary research in order to deconstruct problems related to poverty such as the lack of potable water, disease, malnutrition, illiteracy, unemployment, and discrimination. 

Students learn DesignThinking, Human Centered Design and other methods as a foundation for crafting social solutions.  

While in the village, students live with their classmates’ families and experience daily rural life. This profound and intimate view of living and working in poor communities enables students to understand social problems caused and perpetuated by poverty as well as gain empathy for people, who through no fault of their own, were born poor. 

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