Perfecting your pitch won't come straight away. You need to practice at home, first on your own and then in front of an audience willing to be critical. Take their comments on board and practise some more.

For almost everyone reading this blog, there will be one person, whether a teacher, a friend or someone in business, who has given you a vital leg up at one stage in your life and without whom you would not have done so well.

Every top Indian business company, across sectors, whether it is Tata, Reliance or Kotak, is immersed in offering value through their CSR activities. Dedicating resources to social causes is seen as a profitable move either in terms of enhancing one's image or helping to attract a customer base, while also making a difference.

The lack of drive and commitment to business development and strategic fundraising in the charitable and social enterprise spaces never ceases to amaze me. Don't get me wrong: I'm not implying that all charities, social enterprises, and NGOs lack business or fundraising acumen.

My brother - and co-founder of Refugees Reunited - David and I are in New York to tell the world of another unfolding tragedy, repeated every day across vast parts of our shared world: The fact that hundreds of thousands of refugee families have become, and are still becoming, separated during their escape from conflict, hunger and drought.

The question is how do you find and finance solutions to these problems - that aren't sexy, lucrative or easy to solve - and where solutions are likely to be found at grassroots, by people who are close to their communities, who might not find it easy to source funding on the high street?

This week, hundreds of the globe's greatest brains descended on Oxford for the Skoll World Forum, which annually celebrates social entrepreneurship, and this year set out to discuss how we can seize momentum to drive change. As I mingled with other attendees over drinks in the Ashmolean museum, I was asked repeatedly by non-Brits, "what's the big news in the UK right now?". I found myself, much to my embarrassment and their hilarity, attempting to explain what a pasty is, and why the entire country is talking about them, and then why our newspapers are covered in photos of queues of cars outside Esso garages.

From teeny-tiny sleeping bags ending infant mortality to soccer balls that produce electricity, a new documentary shows how fresh solutions to old pro...

There is little all party leaders agree on. But this year, the whole political elite seem obsessed with some form of 'responsible capitalism'.