Jeroo Billimoria

Background

Billimoria was born in Mumbai, India to an accountant and a social worker. Raised in a family strongly committed to social service, her father's early death caused her to dedicate herself to social causes. Billimoria received a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai (formerly the University of Bombay) in 1986, an M.A. in Social Work from India's Tata Institute of Social Sciences in 1988 and an M.S. in Non-Profit Management from the New School for Social Research University in New York in 1992. From 1991 to 1999, she was a professor at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.

Social entrepreneurship

In 1989 Billimoria travelled for a six months before going back to Tata Institute of Social Sciences and there becoming an instructor. A number of her graduate students were placed as social workers in Bombay's shelters. When Billmoria visited them, she found herself drawn to the children. Out of compassion and concern, she started giving out her home number – to be used in case of an emergency, but soon she was receiving calls on a daily basis. As she became aware of the need for an organisation which could co-ordinate the multiple children's agencies in Bombay to efficiently and quickly contact and assist the children, she tried to persuade these services to work with each other. After several failed attempts and having found very little enthusiasm for the idea, she decided to drop her convincing labour.

Instead in 1991, she founded an organisation called Meljol (Coming Together) to bring together children from diverse background to work, side by side, on projects with tangible social benefits. This organisation seeks to develop children's citizenship skills by focusing on their rights and responsibilities and providing them opportunities to contribute positively to their environment. 'Equal Rights, Opportunities and Respect for all,' forms the basis of Meljol's philosophy.

By 1993 Billimoria was still receiving late night emergency calls. So she put together a budget and set out to raise start-up funds in hopes to start up a hot line for children to call anytime. These so-called "Childline's" telephones would be housed in organisations with twenty-four-hour shelters for emergencies.

In 1996, Billimoria created Childline India Foundation, a 24-hour emergency telephone service for children, based on her work with children living on the streets of India. Eventually all phones available for public use could dial Childline toll free in order to help children find aid in places where an emergency shelter may not be located. In June 1998, Childline held an event, inviting the government and other people from 29 different cities in India to help spread the Childline phone service. Anand Bordia, joint secretary of India's Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, had been in contact with Billimoria about expanding Childline across the country. Following the presentation, Bordia, along with A. P. Singh, deputy secretary of the Ministry of Justice and Social Empowerment, offered to help expand Childline to ten cities. A month later, Maneka Gandhi, India's minister of social justice and empowerment, talked to Billimoria, stating that Childline should be expanded further, offering service to children in all of India's largest cities (totaling more than 1 million in population). In 2002, Childline had expanded to 43 cities in India, with 12 more soon to be added.

At some point, Billimoria started reducing the amount of time she worked at Childline, watching to see how things went without her constant supervision. Confident that Childline was able to thrive without her, in May 2002, Billimoria stepped down from administration in order to pursue other endeavors. To expand on the success in India, Billimoria founded Child Helpline International, an international network of emergency telephone service providers for children. To date this network has answered over 140 million calls across 133 countries. By compiling information on the types of emergencies the children experienced, CHI is able to identify and communicate trends to governmental and non-governmental organisations, allowing emergency assistance to be tailored to fit the specific demands of each community.

After compiling data through the helplines, it became clear that many of the distress calls could be traced to poverty. To address this concern, Billimoria created Aflatoun, a non-profit organisation focused on teaching children their economic rights and responsibilities as well as promoting basic financial management skills and habits. Today her organisation has reached 1.3 million children in 94 countries.

In July 2011, Billimoria founded Child and Youth Finance International, a global network of states, financial entities and educational institutions dedicated to increasing the financial capabilities and financial inclusion of children and youth through collaboration and resource-sharing.. Amongst one of the main initiatives of the organisation is Ye! Community. Ye! Community is an entrepreneurship platform that provides an online community and support to young entrepreneurs between the ages of 16 and 30. The community uses an online platform to connect young entrepreneurs around the world and links them to various tools, resources and opportunities to support the growth of their enterprises.

Keys to Success

Billimoria founded the organisation known as Childline which is a hot-line for children on the streets of India. Jeroo's main goal was to help the children. Children who had been abused,or were lost or sick called the hot-line and Childline sent help. She showed a fierce dedication and determination, stopping at nothing until the organisations had grown immensely. From 1996 to 2002 when Jeroo retired, Childline received 2.7 million calls. It wasn't always easy; in fact, in 1999 Childline was no longer receiving funding from the government and was almost shut down, through sheer perseverance Jeroo was able to turn to some wealthy individuals, and was able to eventually persuade the government to choose a board of directors who were strongly connected with Childline, resulting in most of their success. Jeroo was also able to connect with the local police force and hospitals. She was able to put medical booths in areas where many calls were coming in reporting sick children, and even trained police officers to be more aware of children on the streets around them.

Billimoria also used other entrepreneurial qualities to succeed in building Childline. One important quality that she shares with all social entrepreneurs is their ethical fibre. This can be described through a simple test. A person may picture a situation that frightens him or her and then places the person whose ethical fiber he or she is testing with him or her in the situation. If he or she feels comfortable with the other person in this scenario, the other person has strong ethical fiber. This ethical fiber is often influenced by a relative who has strong morals and makes an impact on an entrepreneur’s early life. Jeroo Billimoria first entered social work because of her father’s private work with charity; once she entered the field she realized that the street children in India were forced to survive on their own. Thus, it was through a need to right this wrong that she first had the idea to start a child hotline. Since then she has worked to bring this hotline to more children across the world.

Another factor in her success is her creativity in organizing the hotline. In their book The Power of Unreasonable People John Elkington and Pamela Hartigan outline three models that social entrepreneurs may use to build their organizations: leveraged nonprofit, hybrid nonprofit, and social business. Jeroo Billimoria began Childline as a leveraged nonprofit. The Schwab Foundation says about leveraged nonprofits, “The entrepreneur sets up a non-profit organization to drive the adoption of an innovation that addresses a market or government failure. In doing so, the entrepreneur engages a cross section of society, including private and public organizations, to drive forward the innovation through a multiplier effect. Leveraged non-profit ventures continuously depend on outside philanthropic funding, but their longer term sustainability is often enhanced given that the partners have a vested interest in the continuation of the venture.” Jeroo looked to government funding to support the organization, but without expecting to make a profit. As her employees she hired young men and women who had once been street children themselves. These employees could easily spread the word about Childline to the children and understand how best to serve them. Many of her policies were influenced by listening to what the children thought they needed. She also pointed to India’s laws to gain government support for Childline. All of this allowed her to bring a cross-sector of society together to address a need.

Recognition and awards

Billimoria is a speaker and advocate of economic empowerment for children. She has been a speaker at the World Economic Forum, the Skoll World Forum for Social Entrepreneurship and several international corporations and universities. Additional awards include:

Organizations founded

Published works