The Last Week of Work

During the last week of work, I was all set to write detailed updates every night, and really take advantage of my last week in India to reflect on my work and how it related to SE, and how I could use what I've learned in these last six weeks in the future.  What ended up happening was that my team and I pretty much stayed up until 3am every night trying to finish our final report and presentation.  Turns out, we had a lot of work to do before our project could be presented to the good folks at PremaVidya.  Our report had many different sections, and many of them ended up being pretty long.  Our final project looked quite different from the project we were initially given.  The goals stated in our final project were:

•  To establish a framework that assesses the learning process in PremaVidya-Project 1947 intervention.
• To provide a method for determining factors which improve and impact learning in PV schools.

The framework and method we developed came from a lot of trial and error on our part.  My team had first surmised that we could simply create another survey to get at this information.  We would develop different questions that would hopefully lead to a better understanding of the efficacy of PV interventions.  We went to a couple of 10th standard classrooms, and distributed the survey. After receiving the results from the surveys, we saw that many of the answers were very similar, and almost too idealistic all across the board.  Even after a revised survey was distributed, we received similar answers.  Students in India are culturally conditioned to give answers authority figures want to hear, and will almost never give criticisms.  With this in mind, we realized the surveys were probably not going to work, so we had to change directions.  We developed a framework for a focus group, that PV could use to find the factors within their program that impact learning in students.  Once these factors are found, the quality of PV interventions can be more easily assessed as the organization scales to 500+ schools in the coming year.

Now, not only did we have to write a final report, but we had to put together a presentation (with PowerPoint visual), that a concise version of what was in our report.  Now, I've made a lot of bad PowerPoint presentations in my day, so in order to make a good PowerPoint, we watched this lovely YouTube video, courtesy of Prof. Moledina, and then we (actually, mostly Parisa) put together a good PowerPoint using the guidelines given to us in this short instructional video.

PremaVidya Team Presentation

Judging by the smiles, they liked us! (Hopefully)

Judging by these photos, and by Prof. Moledina's feedback later that afternoon, our presentation went well.  We were late (of course) in starting, and Parisa and I were quite nervous, but everyone seemed very warm and open to what we had to say.  We were even able to answer some tough questions pretty eloquently.  We were all able to speak, we all spoke knowledgeably (woohoo!).  We left the presentation feeling very good, although we still had to finish writing our final report that afternoon.  After our presentation, Akeela and Pretha took us to buy sweets for the entire office, and then they gave us lunch, which was absolutely delicious.  It was food from Andhra Pradesh, a state just a little bit north-east of Karnataka.  It was spicy and delicious, the perfect last lunch!

PremaVidya Presentation Crowd!

PremaVidya GSE Team: Me, Parisa, Navee, Maddy

It was quite a sad and emotional last day.  There were a lot of tears, from everyone.  We exchanged emails, and addresses, and promised to write and keep in touch.  We had invited everyone from the office to the GSE Celebration Dinner on Saturday night, we had a great many office friends attending, so we were all very excited.  Akeela and Pretha took us shopping after work in an area that was just as good as Commercial Street, but much cheaper. We also promised Darsana profusely that we would have the final report ready for her on Saturday before the party.  Unfortunately we weren't able to fulfill that final promise because Maddy had gone to the hospital via ambulance on Friday night.  She was later on diagnosed with not one, but two kidney stones.  I've got to tell you, even in the midst of immense pain, that girl had a smile on her face.  You've got to admire her gumption, that girl is one tough cookie.

Bhavani and Me (in full saree and jewelry)

On Saturday, I couldn't wait for the day to pass so I could get dressed and go to the party!  Many of the girls in our group were going to be wearing sarees, so we actually had to get all wrapped up relatively early around 4pm, because none of us really knew how to tie them ourselves, so we had to hunt down the maids before we left.  They were so nice, and helped us all out, which was a big deal, because tying a saree is a pretty intense process, even if you have help.  I also broke down a couple of days earlier, and bought all this lovely jewelry to go with my saree.  I'm talking armfuls of bangles, giant earrings, and a tikka, which is a piece of jewelry that pins into the part of your hair, and has a nice big jewel at the end.  It looks very nice with a saree.  Many of our office friends were able to make it to the party, which was absolutely amazing!  I was so happy to see them all.  It meant so much to us that they were able to come.  We had a lovely evening eating, drinking, and socializing with everyone in the GSE program, as well as members of all the different organizations we worked with, and many of our friends and supporters in Bangalore, and in the rest of India.  We even had some Wooster alumni coming in to attend this party!

GSE, Friends, and Supporters

So there you have it, my last week in the GSE program.  I can't believe how much I've learned, and how much I've discovered about myself.  Social Entrepreneurship is so much more than a "good idea", and it actually takes a lot of people to make an idea work.  Even if you are a allstar, jack-of-all-trades, super solo entrepreneur, you need to have a network of people to support you.  People put the "social" in social entrepreneurship, whether they are your client base, your team members, or your greater network of partners and investors.  I also learned that I really like being part of the support team.  Seriously, you tell me your entrepreneurial idea, and I will do my best to make you that you have whatever materials you need, and that you get to talk to the right people in order to support you and your endeavors.  I have also

Team PremaVidya Representives :-)

gotten to know so many absolutely AMAZING people in the past six weeks, it's unbelievable!  I cannot quite articulate how much I am going to miss everyone once I am back in the U.S.  (On a side note, I am actually back in the States, and am writing this post in hindsight, and let me tell you, I miss everyone terribly).  So the point being, if you've got something that needs to be done, I'm your girl, and I'm not afraid to learn new skills, and try something I've never done before.  In fact, I welcome all of the new experiences.  Bring it on.