I apologize again for how long it has been since my last post. But, a lot has gone on and I am eager to update so bare with me as recap my last few days at PV. It has been a busy, busy week and I have just been focused on staying afloat amongst the ebb and flow of India, so here's my best attempt to update the last bit of time.
Leadership in an NGO
On Sunday, I was fortunate enough to meet Pervin Verma. She is the former CEO of CRY India (Children's Rights and You), has been working as a consultant in the development sector for Ashoka Innovators for Social Change, Sutradhaar, an education initiative and Greenpeace India. She also works with Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS) to help create leadership for large scale social change. She was really fascinating and very easy to relate to. I had the privileged of speaking candidly with her for quite some time and she helped me understand where I lie on various issues, by questioning my feelings about SE and poverty with her probing insight.
Pervinji focuses on noetic action at TISS, which she described as a combination of both knowing and wisdom--an important balance between academia and experience. She said that some of the most important movements have been started by the illiterate (and there is a distinction between illiterate and uneducated, because the people she is referring to have been educated by life experiences). She works to build leadership from this space; the balance between knowing and having wisdom. She stresses the importance of using this space to create action, hence her focus on leadership.
A lot of power can be sourced from deep within, from the wisdom that you have gained through having different experiences. Pervinji creates strong, passionate leaders by turning knowledge and wisdom into action and by honing in on a few key questions:
What do you stand for? Your values.
What breaks your heart wide open?
What do you feel passionate about?
What do you want to offer? What will provide you and others will wholeness?
And, are you manifesting what you stand for?
If you are manifesting what you stand for (in Pervinji's case it is compassion, dignity and integrity) then you will stand in your power and embrace those qualities. By doing so, you will also give others permission to stand in their own power. I could feel Pervinji standing in her power and manifesting what she stood for, which helped me open up and feel confident in standing up for my own values. If you can manifest what you stand for in yourself, especially in the NGO workplace, you will find that the hierarchy will dissolve and you can understand people on a human level--their values and their inspirations.
Of course, there will be fears and trepidations that you will face as a leader, and as a person standing confidently in the direction of their values. It is important to recognize those fears and name them, but then step away from them. Step into an area of power, where you are grounded and confident. Let that fear "muscle" atrophy. Pervinji said, release any self-doubt because if you want to inspire others, you must stand and act in spite of your fear.
When acting as a leader you must also "enroll" others by inspiring them to see their contribution and ignite a passion in them. But first, you must be confident in your own stance and your own beliefs.
.
And finally, there are three key components to being a strong leader:
Listening deeply, battling outside thoughts
Speaking responsibly, providing feedback that offers growth and inspiration through speech
and managing conversation, dealing with complaints.
Throughout Pervinji's talk, she really spoke to a lot of the emotions that I have been feeling since I arrived in India, and actually even before I came. When we were able to speak one-on-one afterwards, she really helped me sort through some of my thoughts about where I want to focus my energy, and where I can utilize my talents and passions best. She helped me validate my feelings of uncertainty and accepted my lofty hopes and aspirations. I really look forward to keeping in close contact with her beyond my stay in India.
Last week at PV
As our last week of work came to a close it was extremely hard to say goodbye to all of the good friends I have made since being here. In just 7 weeks, I really feel like I have made connections that will last a lifetime. I am so deeply grateful for how open and accepting my entire workplace was with me, and how willing everyone was to mold me into their culture at work.
The last week was really busy and work went on despite all of the emotions linked to the difficult goodbyes. My partners and I really honed in on our final business report and finished creating the entire framework for a focus group. Our final contributions to PV were using the surveys that we created and distributed at the schools to better understand the cultural context that we were working with. We used that data to create the best framework we could for a focus group. When we first came to PV, our task was to find a way that the company could maintain the quality that it currently provides to the 100 schools it works within, throughout its scaling phase as it adopts 400 more schools.
Of course, this was a huge undertaking, and how to scale is a battle all organizations must fight. After refining our question many, many times and finally came up with (more or less); creating an assessment process that would help PV understand its impact on a large scale. The project has many, many facets and got pretty complicated, but essentially we decided that the videos that PV implements are the inputs and they are inspiring certain activities to take place in the classroom (ie peer-to-peer learning), and it is these activities that are causing student's SSLC (state exam) scores to improve. We used Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory as a framework for understanding how students learn. Then we decided that motivation, retention, motoric reproduction, and attention (the four domains of the theory) are all being affected positively by the videos and thus helping students learn. We are using the focus group to understand how students learn based on the perception of the students and teachers. We will use the information we gain from the focus group to assess whether or not the videos are properly addressing how students learn, and thus having an impact on their success. We trained the soft skills teachers on how to run a focus group and conversed with them about the most effective means for drawing information from a focus group. We learned so much from them and their expertise in psychology. On Friday, we presented our entire project to the different departments and administration at PV and received really great feedback. Suman, the head honcho (especially while Mr. Naresh is away) was thrilled with our work and jokingly said that he wasn't going to let us go back to the US, since he controls our employment visas. It was a really great feeling to have our work be seen in such a good light and be validated by those that will actually be affected by it.
Falling ill
However, I was late to the presentation on Friday because I was at the doctor that entire morning. The night before (Thursday) I was in agonizing pain all night so in the morning it made sense to visit a doctor. She gave me a little advice and guessed around what my problem could be, but nothing could really be assessed without a blood test. So, I carried on my way to the office and made it to the presentation (it was about 1/4 of the way through by the time I got there). After a day at the office, I went home and met with a doctor who took my blood for testing. The next night we went out to dinner and I was starting to feel a lot better. I was taking the medicine the doctor prescribed and I thought maybe whatever it was had passed. But, that night it got much, much worse and I started having trouble breathing and couldn't walk so my friends and adviser called an ambulance. I went to the hospital and immediately got injections to help take away the pain, followed by a CT scan and a night of monitoring and IV drips. In the late morning the doctor informed me that I had two kidney stones. Supposedly, it is pretty common to get kidney stones in India, and so I guess I was in the right place for treatment. The doctors helped a lot and were able to take away most of the pain, so by the next evening I was itching to leave. I kept asking for urgent discharge, and finally they let me go. After I left the hospital, I was feeling much better and had a lot of medicine in me, so I quickly ran home got my sari and went off to our final celebration dinner.
People from all the different organizations that GSE has been working with were at the dinner, as well as alumni that had flown in, and members of India's NGO community. It was a really nice evening and my partners and I had so much support from PV. My boss, Darsana, brought her brother along. He and I got to talking about kidney stones because he had one a few years back. In India when you have something in common with someone else (usually when you are wearing a matching outfit) you do the "same pinch", so naturally, he and I did a same pinch for kidney stones! You just pinch the other person and say "same pinch", and then you can make a wish. I am going to miss all of these little quirky interactions that happened on the daily at PV.
All in all it was a nice evening and I am so glad I was able to make it. I was able to talk to people from all different organizations and got a better understanding of what the rest of the GSE team was doing.
Prepping for travel
Yesterday, I went out to lunch at this really cute restaurant with Bhavani and Sujith from my work, and Kristen and Amanda. It was so nice to just hang out with them and be able to relax before saying goodbye. They are such wonderful people and I am so glad that I was able to connect with both of them on such an intimate level. Bhavani made it very clear that if I need anything at all while I am still in Bangalore, that I needn't hesitate to ask her. I am really going to miss both her and Sujith, but fully plan on staying in contact with both of them.
Tonight, I am leaving for Coorg, which is a beautiful area about 6 hours away by bus. There is a lot of greenery there a huge Tibetan monastery that I look forward to visiting. I had planned on traveling with Kathleen down to Alleppey in Kerala to spend the night on a houseboat, and then to Cochin for a few nights before reaching Coorg, but since I got sick it was no longer a good idea to take a 12 hour bus ride out of the state, plus going on a houseboat to a remote area no longer seemed like the best idea. But, I am still excited to meet up with her in Coorg, and I plan on staying a little extra time there before coming back to Bangalore to fly out on the 16th. I spoke with Suman about Coorg and he gave me a lot of great recommendations on what to do there, so I look forward to it!
 |
| Talking with Pervin Verma |
On Sunday, I was fortunate enough to meet Pervin Verma. She is the former CEO of CRY India (Children's Rights and You), has been working as a consultant in the development sector for Ashoka Innovators for Social Change, Sutradhaar, an education initiative and Greenpeace India. She also works with Tata Institute for Social Sciences (TISS) to help create leadership for large scale social change. She was really fascinating and very easy to relate to. I had the privileged of speaking candidly with her for quite some time and she helped me understand where I lie on various issues, by questioning my feelings about SE and poverty with her probing insight.
Pervinji focuses on noetic action at TISS, which she described as a combination of both knowing and wisdom--an important balance between academia and experience. She said that some of the most important movements have been started by the illiterate (and there is a distinction between illiterate and uneducated, because the people she is referring to have been educated by life experiences). She works to build leadership from this space; the balance between knowing and having wisdom. She stresses the importance of using this space to create action, hence her focus on leadership.A lot of power can be sourced from deep within, from the wisdom that you have gained through having different experiences. Pervinji creates strong, passionate leaders by turning knowledge and wisdom into action and by honing in on a few key questions:
What do you stand for? Your values.
What breaks your heart wide open?
What do you feel passionate about?
What do you want to offer? What will provide you and others will wholeness?
And, are you manifesting what you stand for?
If you are manifesting what you stand for (in Pervinji's case it is compassion, dignity and integrity) then you will stand in your power and embrace those qualities. By doing so, you will also give others permission to stand in their own power. I could feel Pervinji standing in her power and manifesting what she stood for, which helped me open up and feel confident in standing up for my own values. If you can manifest what you stand for in yourself, especially in the NGO workplace, you will find that the hierarchy will dissolve and you can understand people on a human level--their values and their inspirations.
 |
PV Team: Navee, Parisa, me, Kristen
|
When acting as a leader you must also "enroll" others by inspiring them to see their contribution and ignite a passion in them. But first, you must be confident in your own stance and your own beliefs.
.
And finally, there are three key components to being a strong leader:
Listening deeply, battling outside thoughts
Speaking responsibly, providing feedback that offers growth and inspiration through speech
and managing conversation, dealing with complaints.
Throughout Pervinji's talk, she really spoke to a lot of the emotions that I have been feeling since I arrived in India, and actually even before I came. When we were able to speak one-on-one afterwards, she really helped me sort through some of my thoughts about where I want to focus my energy, and where I can utilize my talents and passions best. She helped me validate my feelings of uncertainty and accepted my lofty hopes and aspirations. I really look forward to keeping in close contact with her beyond my stay in India.
Last week at PV
As our last week of work came to a close it was extremely hard to say goodbye to all of the good friends I have made since being here. In just 7 weeks, I really feel like I have made connections that will last a lifetime. I am so deeply grateful for how open and accepting my entire workplace was with me, and how willing everyone was to mold me into their culture at work.
 |
| Lunch with Akeela and Pretha, the soft skills teachers |
 |
| Final Presentation |
 |
| Vasu's Birthday! |
 |
| Final Presentation |
.jpg) |
| Sporting a super cute gown |
All in all it was a nice evening and I am so glad I was able to make it. I was able to talk to people from all different organizations and got a better understanding of what the rest of the GSE team was doing.
Prepping for travel
Yesterday, I went out to lunch at this really cute restaurant with Bhavani and Sujith from my work, and Kristen and Amanda. It was so nice to just hang out with them and be able to relax before saying goodbye. They are such wonderful people and I am so glad that I was able to connect with both of them on such an intimate level. Bhavani made it very clear that if I need anything at all while I am still in Bangalore, that I needn't hesitate to ask her. I am really going to miss both her and Sujith, but fully plan on staying in contact with both of them.
Tonight, I am leaving for Coorg, which is a beautiful area about 6 hours away by bus. There is a lot of greenery there a huge Tibetan monastery that I look forward to visiting. I had planned on traveling with Kathleen down to Alleppey in Kerala to spend the night on a houseboat, and then to Cochin for a few nights before reaching Coorg, but since I got sick it was no longer a good idea to take a 12 hour bus ride out of the state, plus going on a houseboat to a remote area no longer seemed like the best idea. But, I am still excited to meet up with her in Coorg, and I plan on staying a little extra time there before coming back to Bangalore to fly out on the 16th. I spoke with Suman about Coorg and he gave me a lot of great recommendations on what to do there, so I look forward to it!
 |
| Bhavani, Kristen, me, Sujith |
 |
| Bhavani, Amanda, Kristen, me |
 |
| The cows rule the road |
 |
| Eating only the healthiest snacks and watching Laguna with Kasie |
No comments:
Post a Comment