‘The Social Town’ a space for potential changemakers
Neenu Rathin- Founder and CEO of The Social Town
The importance of social sector enterprises has increased due to the COVID-19 pandemic. A lot of NGOs are looking for resources and volunteers are searching for opportunities to reform the society. However, at times it becomes hard to find a place where one can reach out to capable changemakers. The Social Town, located in Ernakulam, Kerala, is an online networking platform for community builders that intends to help those organizations who wish to connect with services, volunteers, funds and resources. It will also help dedicated individuals and change agents to find organizations to support them.
The volunteers will have profiles, where they can update their recent volunteering experiences, set of skills and time availability. Organizations can update their feeds about their recent campaigns and list their requirement for resources. Experienced mentors will reach out to these organizations for giving a helping hand. Corporates can fund projects with ease after scrolling through organization feed history. TST inspires corporates to share their most essential commodity- Human Capital. For marketing it’s services and managing daily operational costs, TST wishes to create a Donor Community and accept micro-donations from individuals, retailers & businesses.
It will not only help social innovators in elevation of skills but also train them through an online social learning platform by giving access to expert panel of mentors, consultants and gig pros. The Social Town (TST) was envisioned by Neenu Rathin (Neethi) in 2013, a hardworking social innovator who has been working in the community building and non-profit sector. She has been developing meaningful connections in the non-profit field since then. The COVID-19 situation empowered her to launch TST for a sustainable change.
Her primary motive is to make TST a platform where parties learn about each other’s work before they proceed to create real world impact through their programs and products. The goal is to utilize 80% of CSR funds for the fight against coronavirus. By understanding the need for a one-stop solution that can link all the participants in the social development sector and eliminate the boundaries between doers and funders, she came up with the idea of SCaaP – Social Change as a Platform.
TST is also working on SLATE – Social Learning Academy for Transformation and Empowerment (an online academy with industry focused learning programs for the social changemakers) and SAGA– Stories of Altruists, Givers and Agents of change (an online magazine which will feature crowd-sourced stories about social changemakers). TST will be the only technological space to bring all social stakeholders under one roof. It will be a place where they can be celebrated proudly.
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