Stree Shakti: Rashmi Singh: University of Minnesota International Leadership Award Winner

Tuesday 3 April 2012

Rashmi Singh: University of Minnesota International Leadership Award Winner

http://www.leadership.umn.edu/news/newsletters/Rashmi_Singh.html

Looking back at her graduate studies at the University of Minnesota from 2005-2007 Rashmi Singh credits her exploration of integrative leadership and strategic planning for helping her to conceive of a new way to support low income women, children, and families in her home country of India.

Upon returning to India in 2007 Rashmi founded Mission Convergence (Samajik Suvida Sangam) in Delhi. This game-changing initiative has substantially re-engineered the delivery of human services to literally millions of Delhi’s poorest and most vulnerable citizens through a unique blend of public-private partnerships that are guided by the needs and preferences of service recipients. A hallmark of Mission Convergence is the extent to which citizens themselves have greater control over their lives and the services they receive. This is an innovative service delivery model never before seen in Delhi. Mission Convergence is particularly having a substantial impact on poor women and their children in Delhi.

This spring Rashmi Singh received the University of Minnesota’s prestigious International Leadership Award for her work in poorest neighborhoods of New Delhi.

Gary DeCramer, Rashmi’s Humphrey School advisor, recalls visiting Rashmi in India last year and meeting with the Chief Secretary of Delhi, who described Mission Convergence as a “world model for cross sector collaboration on a scale never before imagined”.

Richa Dhanju, a Texas A&M doctoral student whose dissertation research focuses on Mission Convergence comments that “[Rashmi] has led the Delhi government to reform its corrupt and inefficient welfare delivery system in favor of a transparent system based on people’s needs”

In 2010 Mission Convergence received the Gold Medal Award for Innovation from the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration and Management, an organization representing over 50 commonwealth countries. Nominations for this Gold Medal award are judged by an international panel of public administration professionals representing ten countries.

Ms. Singh was one of Delhi’s first administrative officers selected to study in Minnesota through the Government of India’s Ministry of Personnel and Training. We are delighted that she will return to the University of Minnesota as a visiting fellow of the Center for Integrative Leadership this fall (October 31st-November 4th; details forthcoming).

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Rashmi Singh

Rashmi Singh is a public servant who has created a distinguished track record for her innovative works in human services, governance reforms and woman empowerment. She was the founder Director of Mission Convergence programme and Samajik Suvidha Sangam in Delhi and was instrumental in laying the foundations, structures and processes which define this unique programme. Her key endeavors through this Mission were to redefine social policy on the basis of new criteria for poverty identification in terms of vulnerability, aligning government policies and delivery mechanisms to reach out to these vulnerable, and building effective GO-NGO partnerships at the grassroots. She is currently working as the Executive Director in the National Mission for Empowerment of Women, Ministry of WCD, Government of India.

Rashmi has provided leadership to the innovative public private partnership program called ‘Stree Shakti’ for the women of low-income groups by steering this programme in Delhi in the years 2004-2007. Under this she institutionalized the Gender Resource Centres as one-stop information cum facilitation center for marginalized women and their families, providing an integrated and holistic empowerment framework benefitting women living in jhuggi-jhopries, slums, resettlement colonies who had little access to development programmes earlier.

Rashmi facilitated the development and adoption of a new criteria and process of defining and identifying the poor. This criteria uses proxy indicators of income based on spatial, social and occupational vulnerability. Widows, single deserted women, and female headed households (FHH) amongst others fall in this vulnerable section. Using this criteria, Ms Singh conducted a unique exercise of mobilizing more than 100 NGOs to undertake a survey of the poor and the marginalized sections of Delhi, living in slums unauthorized colonies, resettlement colonies, and those on the streets. This criteria and methodology of its implementation on ground has been widely recognized by other significant platforms such as ministry of rural development and planning commission.

Rashmi has contributed significantly towards developing systems for introducing transparency, accountability and rights based framework. Through Mission Convergence initiative, she could make significant headway in bringing various existing social security/ benefit schemes of the different departments under unified delivery systems, fostering mechanisms for vertical and horizontal integration in the government, and effective community outreach, especially for reaching out to the unreached i.e. the most marginalized and vulnerable groups.

She has also served as Director, Welfare in the New Delhi Municipal Council from 1999-2004.

Recognitions accorded:

· In 2006 led Stree Shakti to Silver Award at the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration & Management ( CAPAM) in 2006.

· Women of Excellence Award by the FICCI Ladies organization

· In 2010, 2nd ‘Adhi Abadi Award’ for women achievers by Invitca media

· In 2010, the Devi Ahilya Bai Holkar Award, Stree-Shakti award instituted by the Ministry of WCD, Govt of India was conferred upon her by the President of India in recognition of her services in the area of Women’s Empowerment.

· In 2010 won the Award of Excellence in Innovations in Government Services and Programmes and the overall Gold Medal across four awards categories at the Commonwealth Association for Public Administration & Management for Mission Convergence.

· Dr. Sadhna International Empowerment Award, 2011

· In 2011 was conferred the distinguished leadership award for internationals by the University of Minnesota in USA

Educational Qualification

· University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs, Master of Public Affairs, 2007. Major in Management and Governance of Non-Profits.

· I.H.S, Erasmus University, Netherlands. Post graduate Diploma, July-Sept, 2004. Topic of Study: ‘Policies on Poverty Reduction and Local Economic Development’.

· University of Delhi, New Delhi, India. Post Graduation in History completed in 1989.

· Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. Bachelor of Arts, 1987. Honors in History.

Others

· Invited to several national and international platforms to deliver talks and share her experience on governance reforms, GO-NGO platforms, inclusive development strategies etc. Significant are the Leadership Conference at Malyasia organized by Commonwealth Association, Conference on inclusive growth amongst IBSA countries at Brazil, International Women’s conference organized by Art of Living at Bali, besides her award winning presentations at Commonwealth Conference at Malta in 2010, and Sydney, Australia in 2006.

· Serves as patron of several Non govt organizations of repute such as the Delhi Chess Association, The All India Federation of Deaf and Dumb

· Rashmi comes from an illustrious family of freedom fighters, and social crusaders. She is the granddaughter of Sh Kamta Prasad Singh ‘ KAM’, freedom fighter and members of first legislative assembly in Bihar after independence, and daughter of famous literary personality and Hindi crusader, Sh Shankar Dayal Singh, who served as a distinguished member of parliament from Bihar both in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.