‘The Social Town’ a much needed platform for changemakers

With the rise of social issues, a lot of NGOs are looking for people willing to help them and volunteers are looking for opportunities to bring a change in the society. However, at times it becomes difficult to find a platform where one can reach out to genuine changemakers. By providing an online networking platform for community builders, The Social Town, located in Kerala, India aims to help those organizations who wish to connect with services, volunteers, funds and resources. It will also help dedicated individuals and change agents to find organizations to support them.

It will not only help social innovators in enhancement of skills but also educate them through an online social learning platform by giving access to expert panel of mentors, consultants and gig pros. The Social Town (TST) was conceptualized by Neenu Rathin (Neethi) in 2013, a compelling social innovator who has been working in the community building and non-profit sector. She has been fostering meaningful relationships in the non-profit field since then. The COVID-19 situation motivated her to launch TST for a sustainable change.

By recognizing the need for a one-stop destination that can connect all the participants in the social development sector and fulfill the gap between doers and funders, she came up with the idea of SCaaP – Social Change as a Platform. Her primary objective is to make TST a space where all stakeholders- Social enterprises/NGOs, volunteers, and businesses running CSR initiatives – can find interesting projects to contribute to and make every great initiative possible together by understanding each other’s strength and potential. The goal is to utilize 80% of CSR funds for the fight against COVID-19.

TST encourages corporates to share their most valuable commodity- Human Capital. The volunteers will have profiles, where they can update their recent volunteering experiences, skillset and time availability. Organizations can update their feeds about their recent campaigns and list their requirement for resources. Experienced mentors will reach out to these organizations for giving a helping hand. Corporates can confidently fund projects after scrolling through organization feed history. For marketing it’s services and managing daily operational costs, it strives to create a Donor Community and accept all types of donations from individuals, retailers & businesses.

Apart from this, TST intends to launch SLATE – Social Learning Academy for Transformation and Empowerment and SAGA– Stories of Altruists, Givers and Agents of change. The former will be an online academy with industry focused learning programs for the social changemakers and the latter will be an online magazine which will feature crowd-sourced stories about social changemakers. TST will be the only technology platform to bring social stakeholders under one roof. It will be a place where all of them are celebrated proudly.