Interview with Mandeep Kaur, founder at TribesforGOOD
TribesforGOOD develops the potential of individuals as changemakers, through our culturally immersive, educational and impactful experiences in India.
We have interviewed Mandeep Kaur, CEO at TribesforGOOD, to learn more about her background story, how she started TribesforGOOD, and the future she hopes to create through her work.
Get inspired, get involved and ask any questions you like.
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1. What is your biggest life lesson, or key takeaway from this interview, that you would like to stick with our readers?
We have seen that a person is either apathetic to people living in low-income communities or pities them, but there’s never a sense of connectedness with them. When you start interacting with grassroots communities from a sense of equality, it will impact the way you perceive the world. It will teach you important human qualities – respect for others, empathy, social structures, and most importantly how to be part of social change.
2. What was the inspiration for starting TribesforGOOD and how did you get started?
In India alone, there are over 2 million social impact businesses all working to develop solutions to the country’s most pressing social and environmental issues. More than 50% of these businesses are understaffed, leaving an opportune pool where businesses could be doubling their impact.
I got inspired to start TribesforGOOD while working for various smaller non-profits when I saw first hand how important it is to attract the right talent who believe in your cause and have the right business skills. Therefore, we aim to close the skills gap that exists between social impact businesses and those wanting to make a difference.
3. What are your happiest moments with TribesforGOOD?
There have been many setting it up: hiring our first team member, our first social impact journey and when New York Times Bestseller Pam Grout agreed to join us on the journey.
4. What future do you hope to create through your work at TribesforGOOD?
Today, while robots and Artificial Intelligence is taking over the world, we are carving out a unique niche for social causes and fuelling multitudes of innovative social enterprises around the world.
Tribes represents a group of changemakers, do gooders who want to reduce the disparity in our world. We want to build an ecosystem for groups of individuals who want to do GOOD be it volunteering, starting their own social enterprise or transitioning to social impact. We hope that the skills we equip the changemakers and will help them continue their social impact journey of their own in their home country.
5. What is the biggest obstacle you face in achieving this future?
Our biggest obstacle is Voluntourism. Voluntourism, a crunching together of volunteering and tourism, encompasses a broad range of activities where travelers are participating in some type of volunteering. The term gained negative media attention when multiple sources unveiled unethical practices in the industry such as child exploitation amongst orphanage volunteering in developing countries. In Nepal for example, a Unicef study found that 85 percent of all children in orphanages had at least one living parent. After the devastating earthquake in April 2015, Nepali orphanages became a lucrative business for opportunistic traffickers to solicit foreign volunteers to fundraise and work for free to support their profit-making enterprises. One of the fundamental issues in the voluntourism industry is that volunteers aren’t contributing to sustainable change. They lack education around the cause at hand and, in some cases, an element of self-serving interest is a primary motivation, rather than the idea of providing sustainable impact. This is why we aim to equip our customers with the correct skills, which is why we have introduced Volun-gearing.
6. How can readers participate in helping you achieve this future?
TribesForGOOD aims to provide a more sustainable solution to volunteering by pairing participants with social enterprises, enabling skills development and first-hand experience in the philanthropic and impact-driven arena. A person can either join us for Social Impact Journey in India – a 7-day experience in Mumbai, India in August or Volungear remotely. We travel off the beaten path to speak directly with community leaders, see local innovations in action, and understand how progress is being led from the ground up – the centers of innovation.
We have a journey in August, 2019 in Mumbai. You can see details here TribesforGOOD.com
Over to you
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