Social Responsibility Forum, NMIMS,
In association with Vivekananda Youth Forum,
Presents
Vivekananda Youth Forum Case Study Challenge
About Vivekananda Youth Forum
Vivekananda Youth Forum is a non-profit, voluntary organization managed by a team of six members. Its mission is to empower youth who wish to make a difference to their own lives and children less fortunate in areas of education, life skills, health, and creativity.
From imparting formal and non-formal education to the children in the slums of Juhu to interacting with street children in Mumbai, to identifying children with special needs VYF has built a repository of knowledge and skills in understanding their specific needs.

Brief history on Vivekananda Youth Forum
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VYF was formed in 1987 under the guidance of a young monk of the Ramakrishna Mission order, Swami Someshwarananda. He motivated a group of young individuals who wished to make a difference in the society based on the man making ideas of Swami
Vivekananda
Aiming to make life more meaningful, it decided to become proactive and take action rather than simply observing. Its goal was to involve the youth in bringing about social change by bringing together the educated and the underprivileged for mutual empowerment It started by offering non-formal evening classes to the children of the neighbouring slums and over the next five years expanded to five other locations throughout Mumbai
Over the years, VYF involved itself in various areas of community service such as relief and rehabilitation work during natural disasters, crisis intervention, vocational training and youth camps

Current Situation
Currently Vivekananda Youth Forum is being managed by six members. They run various programs like Soup kitchen, Sandhyalaya and
Srujan to name a few.

Soup Kitchen
VYF’s flagship programme, Soup Kitchen, was initiated ten years ago in a single room located in Andheri, Mumbai. Under this program, homeless children are currently taught the concept of living as part of the society through various workshops that VYF conducts. The various skills that are taught to the children include non-formal education, social awareness and life beyond streets. They also provide nutritious diets to the children.

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Program:
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Time – Monday to Friday, 1:00 pm to 4:30 pm
Location – Andheri, Mumbai opposite Versova Police Station.
Profile of children – Age – 4 – 16 years, homeless, straight from the streets

Problems faced while running Soup Kitchen
As of now soup kitchen caters to the needs of 25 children and have been doing pretty well. Although they have better ideas to implement through activities like vocational training and medical support, they are unable to go ahead with them due to lack of funding.

Sandhyalaya
VYF’s first ever project, which started with five slum children, has impacted the lives of over hundreds of children from neighbouring slums in the last two decades. The majority of these children are first generation learners. Their parents are illiterate and mostly work as domestic help or temporary labourers.The program aims to provide formal, non-formal value education, vocational training and nutrition to the children. Methodology for Formal Education
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A team of teachers and volunteers meticulously plan out activities for every Thursday
Children are divided into groups based on age/ aptitude and an able volunteer team is assigned to each group to impart lessons in basic and advanced Mathematics and English
Progress of each and every child is monitored and the programme is subsequently tailored to match every child’s capability, grasp and response

Problems faced while running Sandhyalaya
Sandhyalaya presently faces a strong volunteer crunch.Though they have a tie up with Mithibai, but, during their exams VYF often finds no volunteers at all and hence the activities suffer a setback.

Srujan
"Srujan" is VYF's Vocational Training and Skill Development program which trains young girls and women to makejewellery, design diyas, canvasand jute bags. Keeping abreast with the changing times, VYF has also announced Srujan's presence on an e-commerce website

Problems faced while running Srujan
There are only a few women who make the jewellery and other items like diyas during festivals. The women have no expert training since it is not affordable. A similar training in the market incurs a fee of Rs 2000 per session. Hence there is a significant lack of expertise in the field. The team is also facing a major issue in marketing their products. Though they have tried online websites such as craftsvilla.com but again an issue relating to shipment charges come up.

Problem Statement
Vivekananda Youth Forum is looking to scale the enterprise, expand and gradually reach out to 200 customers by end of 2017. Keeping the scale and revenue requirement in mind, following are the areas you need to advisethe NGO on:
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Marketing management: The women working in the team crafts beautiful handcrafted products. But due to a limited reach and resource constraint, VYF finds it difficult to market their product. As a result they fail to target prospective buyers and eventually lose out on sales.The logistics division is not strong enough to support such financial expenses. Your solution must help The NGO to come up with innovative and affordable marketing plans and help her reach a wider target

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Increase Volunteers: The NGO finds it really difficult to pull off any event successfully without optimum number of volunteers, hence programs like Sandhyalaya suffers a lot. The NGO currently has 5 full time employees, 6 part-time employees and approximately 30 volunteers only. Volunteers from schools and colleges are available but they become inactive during exams, hence problems arise when the NGO’s programs and their exams clash. In your solution, please outline as to how The NGO should deal with this issue.

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Fund Raising:VYF offers SWATAH program, a sponsorship program for the under privileged children. Swatah program currently supports 75 children.
Following

table shows the bare minimum costs involved in supporting a child for 6 months:

Support education of a child with a home

Rs.
6000

Support remuneration of a teacher

Rs.
18,000

Education, Boarding, Lodging of a homeless child, Education, Medical,
Vocational Training & Transportation of a needy child

Rs.
48,000

VYF is currently operating only on personal donations and hence finds it difficult to raise even these minimal requirements for all the children. How should VYF engage in gaining corporate funding? How should VYF raise enough funds needed to meet the current requirements and to scale up it operations and reach? Also under the “Srujan” programme, the training cost for women who make the jewelleries and other items like diyas during festivals is Rs. 2000 per session. Your solution must help The NGO to find ways to raise funds.

Deliverables:
Based on the details given, you are required to prepare a presentation with not more than 10 slides and of duration 15 minutes, with solutions to the following problems faced by the NGO. Keep in mind that the solution needs to be both feasible for the organization as well as sustainable. The deadline of submitting the presentation is Oct 23rd, 2015 11:59 PM.
1. Suggest sales and marketing strategies with both short term and long term approach that can help VYF expand.
2. Suggest methods to make VYF financially self-sustainable in terms of revenue in order to support its ongoing programs and marketing.
3. Suggest ways to improve sales from existing customers throughnew avenues where they can depend on an assured stream of sales which, in turn, will help them to plan their inventory and raw material purchases.
4. Suggest ways of attracting volunteers from premier educational institutions to work on Social Media and PR initiatives.

Additional Rules & Guidelines:
1. The presentation needs to be mailed within the deadline to srf@nmims.edu.in with subject of the email and filename as
VYF_CollegeName_TeamName. Any submission after the deadline and not in line with the convention will not be considered for evaluation. 2. The date for the final round and additional details will be notified to the shortlisted teams 3 days in advance.
3. Shortlisted teams from Mumbai will need to come down to the NMIMS Campus for the presentation. Those from outside Mumbai will have the final round over Skype.
4. At least 2 team members of the shortlisted teams need to be available during the presentation.
5. The presentations will be judged based on the feasibility and sustainability of the solutions. Depending on the feasibility of the solution, the founder may also expect the team to implement part of the solution.

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