Applications open for Blue Ribbon’s Social Leaders Program

Social Leaders Program is a three month intensive leadership program for 18-25 year olds who apply leadership principles to solve one social problem in their immediate communityApplications for the second Social Leaders Program(SLP) are now open. SLP is a 3 month leadership development program that combines rigorous leadership training combined with a practical social project.

Reflecting the goals of the UN Year of Youth, the purpose of the program is to promote a culture of youth led development, beginning with small actions taken by individuals in their immediate communities.

The program has about 150 hours of leadership education including an exploratory workshop called Be the Change. It also introduces key and immediately applicable management concepts in ‘Management 101’. The leadership program is grounded in servant leadership and ontology, encouraging individuals to become leaders by following their heart’s calling. In addition, each leader is given mentoring support and access to leadership insights.

The practical component of the program involves each participant choosing a challenge in their immediate community. Applying the learning to mobilize the community, the leaders will work towards implementing systemic solutions to these problems. In the process they will learn to deal with the practical realities of creating social change.

The vision of the program is to eventually create a system for creating social leaders who bridge the gap between the need and availability of youngsters working in the social space. The program will create an experience that will be professionally relevant and practical. Participants pay a very small part of the program cost, the rest is funded by corporate support.

Applications for the program are now open at www.brmworld.com/slp till 3rd July. For more details contact [email protected]

Abhishek Thakore, Founder, Blue Ribbon Movement, says

“The answer to most social challenges is strong leadership that arises from the local community to take charge of solving the problems. However, we are trying to cultivate servant leadership that naturally arises when a person is guided by their inner voice, and a desire to contribute to something larger than themselves. This program combines cutting edge leadership insights with very local ground level application”

About Blue Ribbon Movement: A youth organization that creates and nurtures leaders who solve social problems through community building and civic engagement. It organizes the 8 country South Asian Youth Conference and is the national co-ordinator for the Road to Rio+20 UN summit. The movement started in 2000 with the vision of mobilizing youth to create a stronger India.

This is the second batch of the program. The first batch had an 8 month program with 18 participants. They focussed on improving the cleanliness levels in the city, coming up with a project called ‘I Clean Toh Mumbai Clean’. About 8000 school students and 2000 citizens participated in activities which ended with a day of ‘Random Acts of Cleanliness’.

“The Social Leaders Program gives us a different way of looking at social change as beneficial to both society and ourselves. It has given me the opportunity to turn the thought of doing something for the society into actually doing it and taking responsibility for the same.” – Apeksha Shah, Social Leaders Program 2010

Please reach out to [email protected] for more details!