Today I spoke to another amazing woman, Hasina Kharbhih. She looks like any other charming young woman from India, who talks about her achievements with great simplicity as if she had set up just another NGO. In fact, she is a great innovator who over the last ten years has weaved a web of cooperation between people and organisations who did not understand each other, let alone work together, to help young victims of trafficking.

She founded and heads the Impulse NGO Network and is one of the Women Forum’s Rising Talents. A management graduate from a good university in India, Hasina decided to defy expectations of a successful career in business to found an NGO which started off by helping rural women in the Indian state of Meghalaya gain a livelihood producing handicrafts. Through close contact with rural communities she saw the increasing numbers of young women and children who fell victims of trafficking and forced labour. This prompted her to focus on this larger challenge, and to persuade local government, the police, the media and local communities to work with her to help these young boys and girls. Now she is running a home centre, she trains the police, educates other NGOs and has built up a network of 11 centres in her state to help victims of trafficking.

She has managed her NGO network with the efficiency and systemic view of the best businesses, measuring results and ready to restructure and innovate to improve effectiveness.

Hasina has received enormous recognition from her work on the part of the international community. She is advising the Anti Human Trafficking Unit of the United Nations and has represented India as Commonwealth Youth Ambassador for Positive Living, among others.

She talks with great passion about the need for NGOs to take a holistic view of the problem of trafficking and work together among themselves and with governments and other institutions. She will make this plea to the larger NGOs who are active in this field, and judging by how many she has been able to persuade so far, I have no doubt she will succeed.

Emilie Goodall is a match-maker, but of an unusual type. At New Philanthropy Capital, she guides corporations and wealthy individuals in their search for the ideal NGO to support. Getting this match right is crucial to ensure that money given to charities does make a difference to people. She is one of 20 Rising Talents awarded by JPMorgan at the Women Forum 2007.

“It is difficult for donors to fund small organisations because large charities have more resources to get themselves known than small ones. We must have a better flow of information about which NGOs are achieving results”.

She believes that NGOs can learn from the business world, as much as time-poor wealthy individuals can learn from working with charities. She talks of many of her friends who agonise over what to do for society, but many never get round to doing anything. This sounds so familiar! But organisations at the interface between the NGO and the business world can take would-be volunteers by the hand and help them put some of their business skills to a good cause.

Emilie has so far focused on very important problems affecting young people in the UK – child abuse, school disaffection, truancy and exclusion – and measured the impact of different types of interventions.

She finds it inspiring to work with so many different players, from the tiny NGO to the millionaire. She sees a new trend of charitable giving among young individuals who have made their first million and want to donate some to NGOs, but who also want to know how the money is spent.

Emilie is passionate about what she does and her passion is infective! I left our meeting convinced that if we get to understand better the impact NGOs make, and if NGOs take whatever practice from the business world can be useful to be more effective, a lot more can be achieved.