Published: Tuesday, 17 May, 2016 11:18 AM
MICA Strengthens Its CDMC with Focus To Be On Social Change
MICA strengthens its Centre for Development Management and Communication (CDMC). Focus to be on Social Change and Sustainability impact
As part of the ongoing strategic alignment endeavours at MICA, India’s premier management school for Strategic Marketing and Communication, the Centre for Development Management and Communication (CDMC) is being strengthened to meet the current and impending demands of the social and development sector. The centre was formerly known as the Centre for Social Change Leadership (CSCL). This comes as one of the key decisions that the premier institute took following the three-day long annual academic retreat last month where different stakeholders of the institute, including alumni, recruiters and community in addition to the President, Dean, faculty members and administrative council members indulged in an intensive realignment exercise.
The strengthening of CDMC involves expanding its scope as well as scaling up its activities which is clearly reflected in the rechristened title of the centre. The CDMC at MICA, in its new avatar, strives to achieve the following
1. Aligning the centre better with the institutional vision that is unfolding.
2. Clarifying and delivering the value addition that MICA can bring through strengthening the social sectors, institutions of social change and social enterprises in terms of helping them scale-up as well as build their capacity.
For the longest time, most social and development projects have consistently fallen short in the last mile – in terms of creating an organic pull via effective communication. The lack of strategic marketing, communication, digital and conventional media planning has resulted in many a worthy projects not meeting their objectives fully and benefits being lost to the key stakeholders. MICA’s CDMC aims to change this as a key part of its mandate. Given MICA’s expertise in Business Management, Strategic Marketing & Communication, Digital Platform & Strategies, Advertising & Brand Management, Media & Entertainment Management, and Marketing Research & Analytics, it is perfectly positioned to provide services to social sector institutions for development management and social impact project communications for national and global stakeholder outreach.
The centre is already on its new path and is building a team of dynamic professionals under the leadership of MICA Dean Dr. Preeti Shroff. The first addition to the team is Ms. Sapna George, Assistant Manager – CDMC.
The CDMC has, so far, taken up the following projects with different social sector institutions :
1. Plan India
Plan India, a member of the Plan International Federation, is launching a Global Conference on Children In Difficult Situations (CIDC) in early November 2016 in Delhi. MICA has committed knowledge partnership and strategy support to Plan India for both the conference and future initiatives such as data collection and story development for the grassroots awards for Frontline community workers, and public awareness campaign for health and treatment awareness of women.
2. SEWA (Ahmedabad)
MICA and SEWA have joined hands for capacity building of master trainers of SEWA in domains such as branding, marketing, new media and soft skills in professional and strategic communication. The MICA Master Trainer Programme for SEWA will focus on enterprise development for value chain development and scaling-up of SEWA's existing food, textiles, culture and education enterprises. MICA will also enable SEWA’s existing projects with upgraded technology required for grassroots dissemination.
3. Urban Management Centre (Ahmedabad)
Urban Management Centre (UMC), Ahmedabad along with MICA and CEPT, through USAID India’s Partnership Program, is setting up the Ahmedabad Sanitation Action Lab (ASAL) Initiative. The overall goal of ASAL and the associated partnership is to design, implement, monitor, and evaluate new ways of improving and sustaining positive changes in the areas of Water, Sanitation And Hygiene (WASH) in urban schools in Ahmedabad.
4. MICAVAANI - Community Radio (MICA)
Over the years MICAVAANI 90.4FM (MICA’s community radio) has developed relevant, contemporary and meaningful content touching upon various important issues like health and nutrition, girl child education, empowerment and holistic development. MICA besides nurturing the next generation socially conscious leaders is also shaping the community radio space into a model developmental catalyst for both academic and civil society organisations.
Commenting on the centre plans, MICA Dean and Director of CDMC Dr. Preeti Shroff said, “It is exciting to see that CDMC at MICA will serve as a bridge for thought leadership and on the ground project partnerships with the Social Sector Foundations, Civil Society Organizations and Government Initiatives in India and Abroad. The Centre will engage MICA programme units, faculty and students in working on a concrete field based projects for learning development sustainability and social impact. We will begin with surrounding community groups in the Shela village for engaging in village projects through MICAVAANI Community Radio initiative led by the students.” “We have also initiated organizational capacity development, social enterprise scaling-up and urban community project partnerships with SEWA, PLAN, CEE, UMC, CEPT and many such organizations. We are keen to promote digital platforms and strategy innovations for enhancing social sector institutions’ capacity in brand management, global communications, data collection and impact analyses, social enterprise development.”, she added.
President, MICA, Mr. Madhukar Kamath said, “MICA firmly believes that Development and Social Change Sustainability begin at home - our goal is to ensure that every MICA student will carry that value as a future leader and professional in Business Management, Strategic Marketing and Communication in a digitally enabled world.”
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