Ghaziabad: IMT Ghaziabad, India’s premier management school, launched a Sustainability and Social Responsibility (SSR) initiative titled I’M The Change on Saturday, October 1, 2016, on the eve of Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday. The first steps taken under the initiative are a course on SSR and a Talk Series. The course, titled ‘Sustainability and Social Responsibility’ is now a mandatory three-credit course for the first year students of IMTG’s flagship two-year PGDM Programme from the 2016-18 batch onwards.
The initiative was launched in the presence of eminent Gandhian Shri Ramesh Bhaiya of Vinoba Sewa Ashram and dignitaries from Ghaziabad local administration at the institute’s campus in Ghaziabad, Delhi NCR. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s teaching ‘Be the change you want to see in the world’, the initiative I’M The Change is the institute’s endeavour towards not just preaching but also practicing SSR.
The objective of the Sustainability and Social Responsibility course is to enable the students imbibe the ethos of sustainability, social responsibility and distributive justice and realise contribution as a value through hands-on execution of live social projects in and around Ghaziabad and Delhi NCR. Students, working in groups will be exposed to situations that will allow them to see how people live, especially the underprivileged.
Each group will then identify a particular social challenge to be addressed and/or zero in on a specific area with a potential for making a meaningful contribution to society by applying their knowledge, skills, aptitudes and innovation. With the identified objective in view, each group will propose an implementation plan with concrete deliverables and will go about implementing it on the ground (through 10/11 field visits).
Introducing the course, Dr. Kasturi Das, Associate Professor, IMTG and Faculty-in-Charge, SSR mentioned, “In order to offer our students a bouquet of options to choose from, we have developed partnerships with several district-level government agencies (including the District Magistrate’s Office, Ghaziabad Nagar Nigam, government schools through DIOS), and a number of renowned NGOs, such as Agewell Foundation, AROH Foundation, Asha Deep Foundation, Empowering Minds Society for Research and Development, Society for Development Activities (Project KHEL), Social and Development Research and Action Group (SADRAG), Smile Foundation, Sshrishti India Trust, Teach For India, and Udayan Care.”
Speaking on the occasion, Director, IMT Ghaziabad Dr. Atish Chattopadhyay said, “Today, we’re embarking on a new journey. In life we are either a consumer or a contributor. The whole objective of this initiative is how we have the joy of giving, how we become sensitive to distributive justice, and to understand and appreciate how different strata of society live.”
