IBM Corporate Service Corps Sept. '09 Kick-off Meeting in Leh Ledakh India

TISS would like assistance with developing a business model and an effective marketing plan for Sea-buckthorn, a fruit grown wild in Ladakh (a mountainous region in North-West India). The goal is to target corporations and create sustainable livelihoods for a large number of Ladaki families and an alternative revenue stream to tourism. The Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) was established in 1936, as the Sir Dorabji Tata Graduate School of Social Work, a post-graduate School of Social Work to meet the emerging need for trained human service professionals. It was recognized as a deemed university in 1964 and since then has been expanding continuously in terms of educational programmes and infrastructure. Today TISS consists of 970 Masters Degree students and 200 Doctoral candidates, and a total of 150 faculty. While responding to the changing needs of the social and educational system in the country, the Institute has gone far beyond the initial concern of social work education. Today TISS offers graduate, post-graduate, M.Phil., Ph.D., Certificate and Diploma programmes of study with degrees in Social Work, development Studies, etc. TISS is also engaged in research projects and field action projects that generate knowledge for teaching in classrooms and also allow testing of theories in-field practice. Over the last 5 years, the TISS has been engaged in over 400 research projects funded in-house and/or in collaboration with various governmental, non-governmental and international agencies. In 2008-2009 alone, the TISS undertook 132 research and documentation projects, in the areas of children and youth, community development, rural development, governance, dalit and tribal issues, women and gender, natural resource management, disaster response and recovery, etc. Field action projects (FAPs) has been an innovative undertaking for TISS since the 1930s. These FAPs focus on the empowerment of marginalised groups, testing new approaches and strategies in response to changing social realities, facilitating development of field-based knowledge and practice. Students are placed for field work in these projects, and, in the process of learning, they also contribute to its growth.
Many important institutional innovations such as Child Guidance Clinics, social workers/counsellors in Hospitals and Family Courts, Special Cells for Violence against Women in Police Stations, all began as FAPs of TISS and later absorbed into public institutional structures.

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• Seabuckthorn