At the outset allow me to take the opportunity to thank you for your love and support for the previous post of Part 1. In case you missed it, you can find it Here.
“When Life gives you lemons, make a lemonade”
Easier said than done, but possible nonetheless.
Disclaimer : This article is based on true incidents and any resemblance is being invited to put forward to enable the inspirations flow. We are in it. Together.
The lessons from the first venture caused many a restless nights. It took a couple of months to get over it and I started to think harder of how else it could’ve been done.
As humans we are wired to point out at the wrongs, the odds, the imperfections and the flaws. Ireespective of the fact that I misspeelled the sentence intentionally, the brain wanders there, processing faster when it comes to all the wrnogs than all the rights.
It is good in the context of improvements but it also comes with a tiny cost. To balance the cost, conscious reminders of patting a pat on your back for all the good work that has been doesn’t hurt, helps you recharge and then there is always the support system.
“Rebound”
The word echoed in not so eventful nights. The confidence in one’s self would mostly avoid being tested. The confidence that the experience was supposed to fuel, finally forced me again to pack my bags and with the leftover funds I left for the mountains. This time, more resilient, more informed, more experienced, more determined.
The amazingly human connections from The Dreamcatchers led me to an entirely new mountain in the Himalayas. The physical part of sustainable development was kinda done and I had a library of UX and psychological analysis of millennial travellers who were more than happy to contribute towards low Impact living.
As usual, again I wanted more.
January in Himalayas is pretty cold. I could very well say I was Baptised with snow this time. Waited for snow to pass by as I did the high level planning of the mission. Learned cooking in the meanwhile to survive by myself as the only road leading to this place was often blocked with snow. The survival training in forces helped immensely to pass this phase and still proceed with work.
The Idea that formulated as a single place had extended wishes to grow.
Drum-roll, PossiVille was born.
The name PossiVille was an outcome of one of the sleepless nights.
“A village of Possibilities”
The physical part of the blueprint was tested and so was the interconnect part between the participants in such a theatre. However, the integration of the social fabric and weaving it along the same lines of co Existence was something that was still to be tested on the field.
Ash Trays from recycled Beer Cans
Recycled Bottles for decor
Recycled tyres for Decor
It took me exactly 2 months of late winter to replicate whatever I had done. Not bad! The place was up and running and was receiving okayish attention from the target group of audience.
Words of APJ Kalam resonated often and I am sharing them here in good hope they might resonate with some readers as well :
“Desire, when it stems from the heart and spirit, when it is pure and intense, possesses awesome electromagnetic energy. This energy is released into the ether each night, as the mind falls into the sleep state. Each morning it returns to the conscious state reinforced with the cosmic currents. That which has been imaged will surely and certainly be manifested. You can rely, young man, upon this ageless promise as surely as you can rely upon the eternally unbroken promise of sunrise… and of Spring.”
Certainly influenced by Swami Vivekananda, as was Tesla.
The thoughts on misinterpretation of Egoism with “Mahat” played a little hum inside as the call to execution more than thinking reinforced they are all the same.
With a humble abode to Lord Krishna’s saying and the eternal belief that fuels all intentions,
I started the phase II of my journey.
This time I was all by myself so I got myself an appentice.
Meet the first stray adopted. Meet Maya.
Apart from contributing and sustaining the vision, I also had to establish another business on a fresh mountain where there wasnt even a single accommodation. Did it gladly, onboarded on all the OTA’s and had my first set of enablers from TISS (Tata Institute Of Social Sciences). The team was getting into some shape.
We conducted a meeting with the locals to discuss the possibilities and came out with a plan.
The rest of the format of scrum based agile framework was carried on from the success in previous venture. Meetings remained to continue and we launched the first batch of empowerment and education.
The mission this time was to replicate the blueprint while still making a difference to the larger section and leverage the presence of such hotspots for social good.
Mission : To teach Spoken English and basic computer skills to the remote rural kids.
I was running on fumes and did not had any funding or NGO backing me up. Nor was I literate on the setting up. nor did I have time. However, the learning from previous set up made sure that proper agreements were in place.
We started with the vision, visiting villagers and kids and asking them to come. With limited Infra and the need to feed the in house teachers, without much swanky resources, we started.
This is how the actual first class looked like.
4 Kids.
While we were comparatively new, we were also settling down and preparing the space. The initial resistance or inhibition to break the mindset was evident. People would rather prefer the kids home than to send them to some random place to some random people.
The on boarding had to be done in parallel. Apart from looking after all the communication from clients and stakeholders, vendors, inventory management of cafe, kitchen and art supplies, linen and repairs left a jam packed day. Still there was time to discuss the individual projects and bake some pizzas. We were a team of 6 now, 4 interns on the mission of making a practical impact, available for a month, One volunteer each from Belgium and Mexico.
We started with alphabets, tenses, sentence formation, greetings and replies while teaching English. In the name for equipment, we had only one laptop, my old Acer. We started anyway.
And it started again. Some efforts towards the physical facet of sustainable co existence.We built a compost, used reclaimed tiles to built a firepit, cleaned the waterfalls, pushed the case of garbage removal arrangements from the local panchayats, as until now, villagers often dumped waste into water bodies.
We planted some trees with gratitude in exchange of the wood we used in the cold.
We developed a fun based education program which brought learning experiences to both the mentor and the mentee, the teacher and the student. As we executed the plan,we had devised a common routine which we adhered to. The mornings were allocated for the team’s fitness.Sometimes,we would go for a run, some days yoga and sometimes Zumba.
The classes were progressing regularly and we were making progress slowly. The entire emphasis was to make the program interactive and fun so that the take home value is more. We laid special emphasis on learning by making the lesson as an experience, pleasant enough to be recalled.
The business part was also taking shape slowly. The word was around and we started receiving guests. Many of them would want to either witness how it was unfolding or even actively contribute towards the process.
There was a very specific skill transfer we were targeting with associated activities like carrier waves supplementing their understanding enabling them to relate.
The age group varied from 4-14. Before we come to numbers lets have a look at how we made it possible by entwining a lot of learning based activities. Improv dance sessions for junior kids and play sessions as CPAF (Cost Plus Award Fee) were planned to align the stakeholder’s expectation in return for Homework.
There were a lot of talented people pouring in and we tried to make sure that life experiences are distributed without the age barrier. Towards this we had storytelling sessions,various workshops and interactive game based Quizzes.
Skill Workshops
We also conducted skill improvements with our limited resources.
Mandala Workshops
We had an amazing live painting session called as “Art Attack”
Art Attack
It wasn’t about exceptional work here. It was about conveying the importance of doing over thinking about approvals. I personally feel, in our country, parents don’t give kids the margin to fail. (If you’re a parent, read about it Here).
You know how Thomas A Edison would say?
Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
We were running a small computer class with initially 5 kids, as we taught them from the basics about hardware and software, we skipped the part that would not be required for skill based training. We jumped on to use of mouse, commands and cursor actions.
Soon there were talks about this new fun method of learning.We were continously considering the backlog and improvising with schedule.
Meanwhile I met with a small accident and broke my shoulder bone. Nothing changed.
There were a lot of kids who would initially be apprehensive of the distance but slowly, they made learning groups from each village with respective senior most student being the group leader.
The computer classes picked up just fine. We tasked them from PPT on their village to Sending email to each other. Taught about searching on google and booking a ticket. Introduced them to E learning.
By the end of season we were so so very proud of having taught the first level of skills making them ready to take on lives in a more informed way and having basic English conversation skills which might not be resultant right now but will surely come a long way in getting skill based jobs.
Provided free first aid at any hour of the day and were called Masterji. It was a very rewarding experience.
Maya was growing up to be a fine young lady.
We even adopted a Kitten and called him Mushroom
While this was happening, we also got incorporated and PossiVille Hospitality Ltd was formed. I employed the learning from sleepless nights (Which I used to learn wordpress) into making of the website, from designing to content. Branding and marketing – checked.
The logo stands as a unison of both my experiences and the possibility of weaving them together. The outer periphery denotes the human element of ecosystem. United by mutual co existence empowering and uplifting each other and society as a whole. The inner circle of leaves denotes nature that has to be nurtured by the society. The arrangement of the leaves depicts recycling & reusing by which we take care of nature and vice versa.
Before I conclude let’s have a customary look at the artwork.
Happiness : Collab : India / Argentina
Jasmine – India
The meeting of Sun & Moon – Israel
The Mother – NewZealand
And many more.
Soon after we got DPITT recognition as a start up recognised by GOI. The business had also slowly got parked. I got a Co Founder with the vision statement aligned. We were running an outstanding rating on all major portals with a 9.2 on Booking.com and 4.9 on Google.
So Shubham what’s the point of saying this here?
When I started thinking that should I pen this down here, I was a little apprehensive about someone stealing the idea which I thought was my “Conceptualisation”.
What happened then?
I realised I would be really happy if someone does replicate !
We are PossiVille and the entire point of putting it out here is a testimony that the only limit you think you have is you.
Thank you for your patience and bearing with me,reading it till here. As a token of gratitude and gentle reminders of harmonious Co Existence , I give you our first music video.
This was my giving back to the society.
What’s Yours?
What would you do If I tell you, you can do anything?
See you in Part III. May be.
So Long!
P.S. Feel free to share the article to anyone who might get any inspiration.
#SocialEntrepreneur #SustainableDevelopment #Community #givingback