Onam. Annual harvest, cultural festival celebrated over 10-days, akin to Navaratri, ending with Thiruvonam, third onam, and fourth onam. Largely in Kerala. Annual homecoming of Mahabali, on Thiruvonam Nakshatra in Chingam month [Aug-Sep]. Vamana Jayanti elsewhere – Bhadrapada Dwadashi, Sravana Nakshatra. Baali/Mahabali, one of 1+7 Chiranjeevis – Maarkandeya, Mahabali, Hanumaan, Vyasa, Parshuraama, Vibhishana, Kripa, Ashwatthaama. Grandson of another Chiranjeevi Prahlada.
Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship has announced 2025 finalists: Rama Kayyali, Little Thinking Minds; Smita Satish, Rang De; Vineet Singhal and Cecilia Corral, Care Message; Community Health Impact Coalition; Responsible Coalition for Resilient Communities (RCRC). Awardees chosen from these finalists would be announced in January 2025 at the World Economic Forum meeting.
Discussed how a young intern-fellow in natural farming would work in the field. A graduate or a successful practitioner to be a ‘learning facilitator’, or a willing practitioner-researcher-academic. And how she transcends to be useful at higher levels. In NF; value-chains; enterprises; food-nutrition-health; institutions-communitization; gender-marginalized-agency; learning-training; HR; data; communications; monitoring-evaluation. As an apprentice evolving into a model, a contributor. Provisionally selected through immersion, tests, tasks, behavioural interviews, counselling. Confirmed internship based on satisfactory performance in the induction that followed selection. Induction is for up to 100 days. Internship is for a year, and fellowship thereafter for another year. Individually in a work village, location, geography. Amounting to some, 5,000*2=10,000 wakeful work hours, at the least. Apart from delivering the ‘results’ agreed, they need daily 7R practice. 7R – read, write, arithmetic+digital, reflect, unlearn, pursue, practice. They need to write a diary, log; observe, make notes of observations, processes; take pictures, make videos every day.
Induction helps them to appreciate themselves, prepare and plan for the internship. Social stripping, blindfold, simulation, river of life, book of life, personal vision-plan with ladders and snakes. Accounting of 5,000 hours in a year. Activities/critical steps, time to be spent, modus operandi, leader-follower. Key results that can be showcased with high guarantee/certainty-probability.
20 questions that might help while wrapping up, concluding induction, gearing-up for deploying in the field. Very brief answer, nor exceeding a slide, 25-50 words. Who am I? What did I learn in immersion? What did I learn in induction? Learning means not getting data, information, but that takes us into a learning loop in the learning curve, and brings us out of it. That makes us change our behaviour from now. That makes taking up action different from the earlier. What am I planning to do next 12-24 months – material, tools, skills, gadgets et al to be taken? on the ‘farm’ – model(s), income(s)? experiments/research? taking, training my co-farmers along? taking the village towards transformation, resilience? on the plate(s) – local consumption-nutrition-health? local input-output individual-collective enterprises, linkages? handing over, building agency? notes, write, publish? 5000 hours, next 5000 hours? Values, non-negotiables? vision-ladders-snakes-plan – activities/steps, learning? long-term dreams, plans? Obituary, legacy?
Can we ask these questions, prepare, plan, progress? In a similar way. In our portfolios, scaling?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, if we go in the flow together planned. In N? yojanayoga for 7L.
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