Monthly Archives: February 2010

When entrepreneurs decide they must go to school

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Summer, Rajasthan… outside it was dry, still and hot, but inside, our workshop room was buzzing with excitement. Khatija, age 15, Rehana, age 16 and Asifa, age 15 were telling us how they negotiated, as a group, with their parents to let them continue going to school.

Exciting times in the workshop!

The girls were from a small village outside Jaipur called Bandhyali where they attended a school run by Digantar Shiksha Evam Khelkud Samiti. The school had classes only up to grade eight. “After grade eight my family said that I should study at home because Digantar school did not have higher classes and they were not going to allow me to go to the school in the city. But I wanted to study further. Two of my friends and I went to Digantar’s office and requested them to upgrade the school so that we could continue studying. They said it was not possible to hold classes for just three girls but if we were a bigger group, they would think about it. We decided to get together and convince the people in the village. I would tell everyone at home that I am going to school but I would go to another girl’s house and talk to her parents. I would make up stories and tell them that all the other parents are ready to send their daughter to school, why don’t you send your daughter too? On hearing that the rest of the community had agreed, they would agree too. This way we became a group of 18 girls. Once again, we went to the office. We said now we are a big group so now you have to help us. That was when they started grade nine and ten.”

Be! an Entrepreneur

Children across India are faced with multiple problems: from no water in the shared community tap to arguments that break out as a result, to not being able to go to the local government school if they have migrated and have no fixed address. Life is a constant struggle. In the midst of these large problems, children have their own day-to-day problems that they are constantly trying to solve: from not being allowed to go to a fair, to not being treated equally at school; from a broken radio to the danger of a sparrow’s nest being destroyed – their problems are many and varied. Just like entrepreneurs, children recognize the potential and the skills that they have. They negotiate and bargain with their parents, teachers and other authority figures in their lives and actively use these skills to solve the problems that they face in their lives.

To see the girls tell their story of making sure they could go to school, please watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GSkC3ADu40

Jyoti Somani

Spring at Going to School!

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Hello and welcome to Going to School! It is February 2010 and sunny Spring is here in our bright stripy office. And with Spring we begin to create 50 Be! books, each communicating an entrepreneurial skill for children in India.

The Be! Book Universe...creative chaos!

So what is ‘Be!’? Be! an Entrepreneur is a multimedia movement of 50 books, 13 epic movies and a 15 part radio series to inspire young people from low income groups to choose to become entrepreneurs and transform their lives and the lives of people around them. Our media is based on extensive research with over 700 children across India…

“Who do you know?” The social connections web; Amina Kidwai in workshop with girls in rural Uttar Pradesh

We spent two years talking to children and young adults about who they think is an entrepreneur and children told us amazing stories of their lives and people they know and how they believe they are entrepreneurs.

Kajal, age 14, from Goyla Village, Haryana, said, “I want to be like Kamalesh ma’am. She rides a scooter and doesn’t cover her head. She is not afraid of talking to anyone, be it man or woman.” For the girls in Goyla, Kamalesh is an entrepreneur because she does things differently from the other women in the community and she inspires them to do the same. The Be! Books and films feature hero entrepreneurs and role models like Kamalesh.

Raju, age 13, from Dumpalapally Village, Andhra Pradesh had a quirky definition of who an entrepreneur is. He said, “Entrepreneurs make toys from stones, twigs and leaves.”

Children see entrepreneurs as people who take initiative independently by ‘going first’ to solve problems, they have a plan for how they will build relationships to form a group to solve a problem – whether it’s income generation or water.

One of our biggest challenges during the research was to communicate the idea of ‘entrepreneurship’ to children because there is no word in Hindi or other Indian languages for the word entrepreneur. The closest words translate to mean a business person or an industrialist and they do not convey the sense of having a new idea or venture or of the accountability and the risks involved in the venture. Or the fact that ‘business’ can do good, i.e. be a social enterprise.

Starting now, every two weeks, we will share our wonderful learning journey…watch this space!

Jyoti Somani

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