Looking Back, Looking Ahead

Introduction

The first panel discussion scheduled for the first day of the 20th Partners’ Forum on 5th December was a look back at the workof Wipro Foundation in its earlier avatars over the past 20 years. The panel included representatives of three partners with whom Wipro Foundation has had many years of relationship – Suhel Quader from Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF), Chitra Ravi from Chrysalis (earlier known as EZVidya) and Shabnam Virmani of the Kabir Project. The panel was moderated by Sreekanth Sreedharan, who worked with Wipro Foundation for an extended stretch in the early years.

Sharing by the Panellists

After welcome remarks from Sreekanth, all the three panellists did a short round of selfintroductions and the work they did in their organizations. Sreekanth contextualized the early work of Wipro Foundation by an exercise which resulted in participants recognizing that most current partners had an association with Wipro that went no further than five years, with only a small number going as far back as between 5-10 years and beyond.

In the first round of remarks, the panellists spoke of the genesis of their partnerships with Wipro Foundation. Suhel mentioned that a grant to seed a citizen science program to engage children with nature was the starting point in 2010, which lead to other directions later. He also briefly outlined NCF’s work as a conservation organization with an education arm that grew out of collaborations with Wipro Foundation.

Chitra mentioned that Chrysalis, as EZVidya, began their relationship with Wipro Foundation in 2001, with a grant to look at computer education in schools. She described her work was in a for-profit company which looked at whole child development to enable quality education and curiosity-driven classrooms.

Shabnam Virmani shared memories of her first meeting with Anurag Behar in 2009, which resulted in the production of education material and work with schools, extending Kabir Project’s work to disseminate the words of Kabir.

Sreekanth summarized the remarks and drew linkages, before he drew the attention of the panellists to the next question, “How does one build an organization and sustain it over the long haul?” Chitra Ravi began her remarks by highlighting that there was no start-up ecosystem when she started Chrysalis and the association with Wipro helped with the initial push to experiment. Along the way, she discovered the three pillars of her work – stakeholders, scale and financial sustainability.

Chitra shared that an important realization for her was that scale and quality were not incompatible. She and her organization have tried to make these two simultaneously possible by moving the model to drop aspects that did not work and by working towards financial sustainability. A key point she mentioned was that it was only in education that the ‘consumer,’ i.e. the child, has no say in the process. She drew attention to developing deep relationships with various stakeholders, particularly parents, as the years have gone by, in their work.

Sreekanth then invited Shabnam to share her remarks on exploring psychological health and education in the development of the Kabir Project. She began by explaining the origins of Shabad Shala, which is the program that the Kabir Project has adopted to actively share the twin impulses of poetry in music, and of interrogating the outside while finding solace for the inside.

Shabnam observed that while in certain cases scale and replication might work, there is also a space for smaller, unique projects which are by nature unscalable, and perhaps the learning from those are different. In Shabad Shala, the experiment is to bring heart, head and body together in response to the song, a holistic experiment in exploring well-being in the school. Sreekanth drew attention to this embodied knowledge which is also being recognized by a wider community now.

Suhel spoke next when invited by Sreekanth, taking the example of NCF to link ideas with program development. The idea of SeasonWatch, as Suhel explained, is to explore if children could participate in an extended science experiment. The program’s purpose is to understand the seasonality of trees and observe the impact of climate change on plants.

There have been other incidental documentation of flowering, such as the 1200 years of records maintained by monks in Japan for the starting dates for blossoming in cheery trees. However, modern scientific studies that look at the many factors that affect plants’ lives across a period of time are scarce and not at scale. Along with meeting its scientific goals, SeasonWatch has also became an opportunity for children to explore their relationship with nature.

How does a child value what they have around them? How do we allow children to be in their context? In addition to linking ideas to programs, the question of financial sustainability does arise. Perhaps the way forward is to have a clear goal for the long term. However, we perhaps need to financially break it down to shorter 3-year goals to help communicate better with funders.

Sreekanth concluded the session by drawing attention to the importance of collaborations that all the three speakers alluded to in their remarks. He highlighted its importance in the work of each organization in the long term. He also appreciated the panellists for drawing from, and responding to, each other. Following this, there was a short Q&A session for fifteen minutes in which participants got the opportunity to pose a range of questions to the panellists.

Post-Panel Discussions

Rahul from Swatantra Talim raised a question for Shabnam on the viability of Shabad Shala in a polarized world. Shabnam responded that the answer lies in the myth of the Humming Bird trying to quench a forest fire with drops of water.

Drawing parallels with this myth to the work in education, she said that we need to recognize that work done with love, faith, intensity and rigour in responding to situations like ours is critical.

Rohit Shetti asked a question on the resistance to systemic work, both external and internal. Chitra responded by saying that if basic consumer analysis is not done, then no model would be available for systemic work. Therefore, resistance has to be understood in that context and explored as systemic work progresses.

On another question related to systemic work in the space of social and emotional learning, Suhel mentioned that we need to work with teachers and the environment. For this, empathy is essential.

Empathy is critical not just with respect to the environment but with other people as well. It is a critical aspect of learning that has impact on collective action, on our relationship with all the people of the world, and with the other creatures with whom we share this earth.

Sreekanth concluded the session by thanking the speakers and the audience for their participation.