Pursuits
Every pursuit of ours represents a unique fruit or flower growing within or adjacent to our young forest.
The scale of each pursuit varies, with many running in collaboration with others who share our vision and values, and different members of our team engaging in what brings each of us alive individually.
Nevertheless, every pursuit plays its own role in our exploration, ensuring balance in our forest's ecosystem and allowing the manifestation of the change we hope to see in the world.
Future Imaginaries Youth Fellowship
A program supporting youth to document South Indian community responses to the global crises and create
narratives that challenge and complement dominant
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stories about the state of the world, in partnership with the University of Sydney, and India and Bharat Together (IABT).
The Green Silk Road
An alternative to air travel that enables people to move between India and Europe (9000 km) while supporting and connecting socio-ecological projects along the way.
Inner Climate Academy
A space for inner reflection & inquiry, collaborative research & dialogue, and facilitated explorations that aim to transform our relationship with the living Earth.
Vikalp Yatra
An experiential form of learning wherein we engage with inspiring communities, organisations, initiatives, individuals,
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or even biological ecosystems by journeying to different parts of the country and facilitating an exchange of knowledge, skills and perspectives.
Alternative Currency
An attempt to initiate experiments in the realm of creating and working with currencies that captures the true essence of the word, to
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catalyze the flow of not just tradable goods and services but all forms of wealth, including knowledge, trust, life, experience, and more.
Alternative Economies Vikalp Sangam
A thematic confluence of activist organizations working on alternatives to the dominant economic system. Anchored by the Vikalp Sangam process.
Local Pondy Food System
A multi-stakeholder platform anchored by the French Institute for everyone eating, growing, and working with food in and around Puducherry.
Games
Through games, we can joyfully inquire into and question globally dominant narratives. They tend to trigger our curiosity to further explore the roles we play as cogs in this massive machine.
Publications
While we build a New Story, maybe there’s merit in exploring New Books! Ones that share our lens and hence connect people, lend power to each other, and help us find kindred spirits.
History
Social Entrepreneurship Association (SEA) was started in 2011 with the intention to bridge the gap between the world-wide movement of changemakers that Gijs Spoor was embedded in through the Ashoka Fellowship, and other social entrepreneurship forums and Auroville, an intentional community with people from over 50 countries settled in South India. The first phase of the organisation (2011-2018) was focused on incubation of impact startups. 40 such ventures have graduated from our program, some of which have become leaders in their fields. The incubation program was offered as part of a global network called the Global Social Entrepreneurship Network. Operations were run by students and youth volunteers who were as much beneficiaries of the work as the incubatees.
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The second phase of SEA’s life has been focused on more fundamental critique of market economy and its role in the web of life. We offered a 9 month course on (R)Evolutionary Leadership in which both inner and outer crises and responses were addressed, in ways that were as embodied as possible to avoid language barriers. We mixed elements from Indic studies (mainly Mahabharat, yoga and Vastu) with occidental complex system theory and integral spiral dynamics. Again, the network approach has been key, this time through the Vikalp Sangam. SEA now anchors the sangam’s Alternative Economy inquiry.