INDUS ACTION’S PARTNER ENTREPRENEUR STORIES
Saleem During my Gandhi Fellowship, I had taken part in a village immersion stint without any organizational support. Initially, people of the village were not ready to accept me because I was from a different state and community. But I started to meet people and explained to them the purpose of my village immersion. A few days later, I started offering free tuition to children of the village. Within four days, I was giving free tuition to almost all children. As a result, I was offered a place to stay and regular meals, which was a paradigm shift in their attitude towards me. It was also an aha moment for me because I was able to influence them without any kind of authority. This experience reinforced the belief that influence is possible without positions of authority. While working in Kaivalya Education Foundation on Head Master and Government officers Leadership, I decided to work on policy implementation. When I was placed in Dungarpur, a completely tribal belt, this incident took place. Rajasthan government at that time was very much focused on implementation of CCE (Continuous Comprehensive Evaluation). While number of workshops were given by different stakeholders on CCE to the Head Masters and Teachers, the last set materials related to CCE were circulated by end of December, which was very frustrating for Head Masters and Teachers, as they had to fill the CCE records from June. From this experience, I decided that I want to work on policy implementation and systemic reform.
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