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Genre Of Impact Education
Education for adolescent girls and boys studying in Government Secondary Schools in Bihar in grades 9-12.
Illustration: Bhavya Desai
PROBLEM
- Lack of market-relevant skills taught to young people in government secondary schools that could prepare them for entry into the workforce as entrepreneurs and skilled workers.
- Lack of school-based work transition programs that guide young people into skills training and jobs through links with employers and government support schemes.
- High barriers to participation in work amongst girls in particular.
INSIGHT
How do you communicate entrepreneurship in a fun, exciting, and inspiring manner to young people in rural Bihar? Design-driven, career-focussed, market-ready, new career skills stories in the form of graphic novels in Hindi and English told through the magical realism genre in which young women and men are the masters of their fate who take action to make the world what they want it to be, sustainable and solving for climate change.
ACTION
Building sustainable entrepreneurship and life skills through design-driven compelling storytelling for young women and men studying in grades 9-12 in government secondary schools in Bihar for a 4-5 year period. As Editor-in-Chief/Editorial Director at Going to School, the creative not-for-profit education trust, Anil Sadarangani, keeping in mind the programmatic proposal and KPIs, led the project to conceptualise and create 30 graphic novels covering sustainable green enterprises such as beekeeping, organic farming, biogas, biomass, solar, sustainable packaging, sustainable furniture, eco-tourism, recycling, coding for sustainability, self-defence, becoming a sports coach, journalism, entry-level healthcare jobs, banking, jam-making, and others. The stories mostly revolved around a young woman aged 16 to 19 as the protagonist who lives in Bihar and who identifies a problem affecting her and many people where she lives. She, along with friends, family and locals, girls, boys, women, men, embarks on an epic adventure following Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey. Even as she staves off marriage and other Sexual-Reproductive-Health-related pressures, she uses her design-thinking skills to research the problem, finds out what people want, designs a sustainable and climate-change-solving solution, prototypes and tests it, ultimately going to market with her product or service that has a human-centric evolution, while creating jobs for local women and men, establishing her producer company and changing the local economy and inspiring others, both men and women, to embark on their own entrepreneurial journeys. Apart from being printed, the graphic novels were also converted into e-books and on-boarded on the program’s student-learning APP called the YESS APP. As part of the pandemic pivot, Anil led the adaptation of the graphic novels curriculum to a number of television shows that reached 20 million viewers (as per Bihar government estimates) on the state-run, free-to-air television channel Doordarshan (DD) Bihar that covered each of the graphic novel stories/sectors.
RESULTS
As per the annual reports filed by the CEO, the graphic novels were printed and distributed across 11 districts in Bihar in 1,000 government secondary schools for 300,000+ young people studying in grades 9-12. During the pandemic, the Young Entrepreneurs Skills Show (YESS TV Show, also titled Yuwa Udhyam Kaushal Show in Hindi), the pivot of the graphic novels program into 200+ live-action masterclass episodes conducted by industry professionals from different fields called School TV, and a third TV show titled Rough Cut: Green Enterprise Internship Adventures in Bihar that saw kids attend real-life internships based on the graphic novel sectors, all aired on DD Bihar, with Anil leading each of their adaptations. The books were also written in Marathi when Anil led the organisation to sign a 5-year MoU with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), the municipal body that governs the city of Mumbai in the state of Maharashtra.
Funded by: IKEA Foundation, Echidna Giving.
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Swamy as he is fondly called, understands grassroots enterprise through two lenses – first as an advanced diploma recipient in molecular diagnostics further to an Msc. in biotechnology and second as the founder of a social enterprise called Kaskom, a farm to fabric collective that is revitalising India’s native cotton value chain. His passion for social enterprise and agro-ecology that weaves in local communities & practices runs deep. As does his understanding of the circular economy. He is also the Vice President at the Organic Farming Association of India (OFAI). He is involved in developing the Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) for all activities from seed to fabric, for the Indian short stapled indigenous cotton, along with Gandhigram Khadi Dindigul & Gram Seva Mandal, Wardha.
Swamy has conducted numerous workshops around the revival of organic practices and indigenous cotton, held several lectures apart from being a core participant in impactful programs. These include “Reviving community based indigenous seed systems” funded by SWISS-AID India, exploring linkages between weather parameters, paddy cultivation and adaptation activities in collaboration with Earthnet Foundation, Thailand, state coordination of “Save our rice campaign” in Karnataka and the “Community biodiversity management and conservation programme” funded by GGF.
Creative. Honest. Relevant. Be it a campaign, product design or a whitepaper,
Aakanksha’s mantra has never failed her. An alumna from the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts – Singapore, specialised in design, media and animation, Aakanksha is first and foremost a storyteller, with a decade of experience developing brands across industries through consumer insights, advertising, marketing, branding, and content strategy. Conscientious and driven, Aakanksha prefers to use her creativity and understanding of human behaviour to craft impactful deliverables that do good. This has proven particularly beneficial for impact projects like Domex’s #ToiletForBabli and India’s Darwaza Band (Swachh Bharat campaign). She has worked with Lowe Lintas and The Glitch, with a portfolio comprising Flipkart, Tanishq, Carlsberg, Mumbai City FC, World Bank, Magnum Ice-cream, Arrow, and more. She has also worked on the Taj, Betterplace Safety Solutions, Nestaway, Botbot.al, and 2359Media.
Having spent over 25 years curating and designing high-end experiences and advising sustainable ventures, Philippa is passionate about discovering stories, culture and people and uses her empathy and passion to manifest unboxed ideas. Shuttling between Yorkshire and India, she helps clients reimagine the possible. A destination development specialist and, having worked on both sides of the industry, a consultant both to leading tour operators as well as DMCs, she is also the author of Escape to India, a columnist and advisor to charities and NGOs. Her adventures are literally a novel – skiing, trekking, white-water rafting, riding priceless Marwari horses, fine-dining with Maharajas, driving vintage cars, sleeping under the stars, discovering new-to-her wildlife species & being off the beaten track. Think Lara Croft, out of the box.
We call him our IP man. Having worked on building brand platforms for iconic brands like Harley Davidson, Ray Ban, Jack Daniel’s, Hard Rock Cafe, Raymond & Taj, Arpito’s body of work has been versatile and at scale. With a long foundational strategy stint, early in his career, with the Times Group in the President’s office, Arpito went on to become the Group Director at Rolling Stone and Man’s World India, launching and giving the cult brand legs in the brand activations and IP space. A Times School of Marketing alumnus, he is a hodophile, music connoisseur and possesses an uncanny knack for creative brand solutions. He revels in his understanding of community platforms, across scale, having engineered and conceived several initiatives for leading global brands. He is also the chief consultant to the Ministry of Music & Arts, Govt. of Nagaland, a consultant with Drishti and has led several initiatives with government bodies and social organisations.
Narrative could well be Anil’s middle name, which expresses itself to telling effect across his diverse roles as an entrepreneur, impact specialist, director-filmmaker, IP producer, business manager, festival director and Corp. communication. His earlier stint as the Editorial Director at Going to School Fund, a creative not-for-profit education trust, saw him ideate and design impact programs, content around sustainability, seeding entrepreneurial skills amongst young students in government schools. His work is powered by his extremely diverse life experiences. As a journalist storyteller with Times of India, HT, DNA and Mid-day, learning filmmaking at UCLA, as an assistant director on the National Award-winning film Fashion, writing a coffee table book with India’s first Oscar-winner, the late Bhanu Athaiya, titled The Art of Costume Design, published by Harper Collins with a foreword by Lord Richard Attenborough, being the India director of the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the world’s first global short film festival, co-creating the VOTE FOR INDIA platform and more. A polymath experience and perspectives are what he brings to venture design.
