Flood situation is receding. Heavy rain forecast continues.
Not-for-profit, volunteer, philanthropy landscape is changing. A fraction of them are leading the way. They do not want to support treating the symptoms. They are audacious, and want to go one step deeper and address the causes, maybe as examples – seeding, trying, piloting, and mega piloting. Technical support for scaling, mainstreaming. Support for systems change, disruption triggering. Support for collectivization, communitization, nurturing agency, movements. Lots of these make changes in government policies, actions and budgets, and behaviours of communities. They want to contribute to ending hunger, poverty. They seek exponential non-linear geometric progress. They want to give back, give forward. Success needs persistence over time, may be over 10-20-30 years, community in the lead, government engagement, and collaborations. It requires broad-based shared understanding; compelling milestones; scale designs; demand groundswell; and corrections on the ‘road’. They are willing to fund these. They are willing to make the funds usable flexibly, to plug the gaps. They are willing to campaign, push hard persistently, and they are willing to support ‘push’.
They are making big bets, long-term, and multiple times. They are creating space to learn, adjust, and even fail. And be patient. This work is very good, and transformative. In new ways, new timelines-energies, on much larger scale(s), more geographies, more domains, deeper and deeper. Maybe more of us doing, scaled-out. More partners. And gradual tapering after the peak. This helps us and the universe. Then, do we really need intermediaries between the doers and donors?
Teachers. Teachers who made a huge portfolio of difference. Apart from mother, father, family, and friends, the community of teachers is a long list. Varied, varied intensities, and varied ways – pedagogies. The tuition master who took me to Telugu alphabet, numbers; games, songs, and words. The school assistants, the single teachers for three classes in the first 3 years of schooling. Counting, tables. Albums. The teachers who helped the village school upgrade from Class 3 to 4, 5, 6, and 7 as I moved upwards. The teacher who nurtured me despite my idiosyncrasies. The co-curricular and cultural teachers in the school, where the facilities were near zero. The teachers who ran school tuition centres and were with us late into the nights. The teacher who made me write the Gurukul test. The family that hosted me for a good number of days before I moved into Gurukulam. The entire teaching fraternity in Gurukulam. The teacher(s) who discovered and nurtured the ‘genius’, and to win the mathematical Olympiad, and become a national talent scholar. The chess triad. The teachers who made us excel at science fairs, and district-state competitions, including Gitanjali rolling shield. The principal, the secretary who did the impossible and took me to Sagar Gurukulam. The seniors, peers and juniors in Gurukulams who got into inner circle(s). The teaching-learning fraternity at REC/NIT and IRMA. The double dozen. The associations, clubs. The lifelong friends giving us exposure to possibilities, literature, technologies, national institutes, and organizations. The colleagues and students at the engineering college. Then the co-travellers 40-year long LPRD-PVM journey. 100,000+ individuals and their teams, groups, 1,000+ entities. Many more indirectly, vicariously. All life.
Can we keep learning, unlearning, being grateful to teachers in their various forms for being there?
Yes, we can. If we coexist, if we commence on flowing and learning. In N? chaaturyoga for 7L.
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