At the turn of the millennium, the world's nations adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) to address global poverty and inequities. The global financial meltdown of 2008, the climate change crisis, social unrest, and demand for better governance have moved ESG issues to the core of business decision-making. Mirroring global trends, India, too, stressed on improving inclusivity, enhancing equity, and addressing environmental sustainability issues to address existing disparities affecting human well-being and prosperity. Consequently, the Government of India mandated businesses to integrate social, environmental, and human development concerns into the value chain of their business and recognise the community's relevance as a stakeholder. Given this context, universities have a crucial mission to play in this transformation by training current and future decision-makers. As a responsible university, NMIMS advances this mission guided by the ACEEU standards of Service Alignment and Third Mission Activities. Our academic mission is closely integrated with community development and industry collaboration.
Genesis: We Care: Civic Engagement Internship
In response to the evolving global and national imperatives, NMIMS aligned its engagement strategy with the principles of social inclusion, environmental stewardship, and equitable economic growth. In accordance with the university's strategy, the School of Business Management (SBM) at NMIMS incorporated sustainability-related issues in its MBA curriculum. This approach ensures that our academic initiatives not only build managerial competencies but also contribute meaningfully to advancing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) through active collaboration with communities and stakeholders.
To advance the sustainability agenda in 2010, the Jasani Centre for Social Entrepreneurship and Sustainability Management was instituted. The Centre focuses on creating socially adept managers and transformational leaders by formally engaging them in designing creative solutions to the social agenda. This is anchored in our belief that exposure to social inequities will sensitise students and facilitate values of inclusion, compassion, and resilience. Given this backdrop, it embedded a three-week ''We Care: Civic Engagement" internship in the first year of its MBA program (Jasani Centre, n.d).
This three-week immersive internship provides students with direct exposure to grassroots realities. It fosters compassion, empathy, inclusion, and systems thinking, cultivating future managers who can create transformative impact across sectors.
Community Engagement Beyond Academia
The We Care internship reflects our strategy to actively contribute to societal well-being, local development, and public value creation. By partnering with NGOs, local communities, social enterprises, and CSR departments, the internship, besides providing experiential learning to students, also positions SBM as a catalyst for community development.
The internship is scheduled in the third trimester of the MBA programme with the following objectives:
1) "To foster analytical skills among students to analyse the root causes, existing solutions, and cascading impacts of social issues on society and business.
2) To create abilities to be socially sensitive and inclusive.
3) To develop skills in applying management logic and technical and critical thinking in proposing innovative solutions to address social issues" (SBM, n.d).
Strategic Practices
The internship process includes onboarding 250-300 social sector organisations needing management interns, profiling students, sharing their CVs, and designing a strategic fit between the organisation's requirements and students' interests and skill sets. Capacity-building workshops, pre-placement visits, and appointment of organisational and faculty mentors familiarise students with the internship requirements. Each faculty member mentors 12-15 students and helps in integrating experiential learning with academics (AACSB, n.d).
Students are placed in social sector organisations at the pan-India level for 150 man-hours over three weeks. To strengthen the service delivery system of the organisations, students work on projects such as developing management plans, systems, digitisation, resource mobilisation, research, etc, and align their work to relevant SDGs.
Post-induction, students brainstorm with the NGO staff to finalise their proposed action plan and subsequently start executing the project. Students invest the last few days in drafting and presenting their reports, which faculty mentors evaluate.
Internship-related classroom discussions, posters, B-Plan, and documentary presentations help to strengthen the sustainability dimension. Formal feedback is taken from students, internship organisations, and faculty mentors to review and revise the internship. This enables us to drive continuous improvement for sustained relevance and impact.
The annual We Care Anthology captures the experiential learning of the students. It documents first-hand narratives, insights and learnings gained by the students. This knowledge repository serves as a teaching resource, showcases tangible impact and inspires future cohorts.
Impact
Students experience transformative learning that equips them to drive positive social change. They appreciate the importance of advancing the SDGs to promote sustainable development and adopt ethical leadership practices, which are in line with ACEEU benchmarks.
The opportunity to interact with the resource-poor communities, examine their challenges and devise simple solutions in consensus with them has boosted students' enthusiasm, problem-solving and leadership skills. It has fostered humility, empathy, adaptability, and pragmatism. Based on this experiential learning, students and faculty have been engaged in publishing research and case studies.
From the stakeholders' perspective, ninety per cent of participating organisations were highly satisfied with our students. Fifty per cent of our students offered support in digitalising processes and strengthening the organisation's service delivery systems, staff capability and reach. Over twenty per cent of the students enhanced the digital presence, impacting the organisation's brand.
Our recruiters feel that social engagement has influenced students to be inclusive. The experiential learning model has received national and international recognition. This validation has aided in scaling the internship to seven Campuses/Schools of NMIMS.
Conclusion
We Care: Civic Engagement demonstrates the power of educational institutions to be catalysts for societal transformation. In alignment with ACEEU standards, SBM has integrated service-oriented learning and third mission activities by embedding civic engagement as a compulsory non-credit component of the MBA programme. It has enabled students to appreciate that civic responsibility is not a soft skill but a core managerial competency.
The strategic fit and synergy between diverse ecosystem stakeholders like the Faculty, NGOs, Corporations, governments, and social enterprises has been strengthened over the years. We believe that business education, when rooted in humanity, creates not just professionals, but changemakers. Building on over a decade of meaningful impact, our next phase will focus on deepening systemic influence not just for students and partner organisations, but also for policy and practice in the development sector.
AACSB (n.d.). We Care: Civic Engagement Internship- 2023 Innovations. Retrieved from https://www.aacsb.edu/about-us/advocacy/member-spotlight/innovations-that-inspire/2023/svkms-nmims-university
School of Business Management (n.d). We care : Civic Engagement Internship. Retrieved from https://sbm.nmims.edu/we-care-civic-engagement
Jasani Center for Social Entrepreneurship & Sustainability Management (n.d.). MBA students' involvement in the social sector: We Care: Civic Engagement Project. Retrieved from https://sbm.nmims.edu/about-jasani-centre.php
.
Images courtesy of the author