Awakin.org

Sunday, December 15th, 4:30-8:30PM, Vadodara

Aviram Rozin devotes his life to bringing compassion into everyday life, compassion towards the planet, animals and people. Sadhana Forest, the organization he founded in 2003 with his wife Yorit is now working in India, Haiti and Kenya. This volunteer-based organization plants indigenous, drought-resistant, food-producing trees around people’s homes in arid areas. Sadhana Forest also works with local children and gives shelter to cows saved from slaughter in India and in Kenya. Aviram lives in Auroville, South India in a hut built from natural materials and powered by solar energy. His diet is 100% raw vegan, and therefore contains no animal products and uses no fuels to cook. He is a member of the Global Restoration Council and a board member of the Foundation for World Education.

Archana Bahuguna is an educator and founder of Space for Nurturing Creativity  nestled in the small Himalayan village of Khumera. She runs this learning space that is steeped in virtues, that she believes are imbibed when practiced as individuals and a community. What drives her work is the question, ‘how do we unleash the highest human potential?’. Getting creative with local resources, innovating in small ways and big, children here learn through the method of silence, reflection, self-learning and dialogue. Children here do not have textbooks but rather ask questions and design their own learning.

Prior to starting SRC, she traveled across India for two years to explore alternative education schools. She came back to Garhwal and spent a year doing inner work and deepening her understanding of education. The villagers said “we don’t know what you are doing but we can feel that its good and we want our children to grow with you”. And that is how Space for Nurturing Creativity started with five children. 

Kalyan Kumar Banerjee is among the ten co-founders of Mindtree, a Global IT leader company. He was instrumental in defining a learning culture, introducing communities to foster a learn and share ecosystem, teaching systematic innovation, and building programs for lifelong learning. Having worked in the growth and transformation of the computer industry for 26 years, Kalyan joined Centurion University as Pro -Vice Chancellor in June 2012 to bring changes in the academia of Odisha. He is also the Founder Director of Klorofeel Foundation, an organization having intrinsic focus on delivering effective and inspiring education for the under-served. He is also associated with startups like Reap Benefit, Walnut, Vidya Kshetra, iAccept, Spaneos, Rise High Public School, Posibolt and Showhow2.

Nayana Jasmatbhai & Hina Mansukhbhai come from remote villages of Gundala and Dhari. They study in ‘Kaa Shala’ a unique school in a small village of Dhedhuki. They do not have text books, the students explore areas of interest ranging from mud work, house building to terrorism and study them for a whole year. They experiment, learn with the locals and also travel to be with field experts. If you ask them why they study, they will tell you – ‘definitely not to get a job, that is a by product, we study to build virtues.’ When you meet them they will tell you stories of how they started their dorm by putting a flat log of wood on a treetop. In keeping with that spirit, you would be hard pressed to find material on the school on the internet, but here's an account by a young man who lived with him in Dheduki for a year.

Sangeeta Isvaran, founder of the Wind Dancers Trust, is a dancer-performer who developed the Katradi method, working in marginalized, underprivileged communities using the arts in education, empowerment and conflict resolution across 30 countries. For her scholarship in the arts, she has been honoured with the highest national award for young dancers – the Bismillah Khan Yuva Puraskar. She is a Fellow of the International Institute of Conciliation, USA, and an Honorary Associate of the Nature Conservation Foundation, India. Speaking 8 international languages, she has taught in over 20 universities and international organizations.
“Hatred cannot be vanquished by hatred. The fractured world we live in today needs more empathy, more love to destroy the fear that underlies most conflicts and discrimination. The most important life lessons I've learned were in my dance classes as a child, learning to create rasa (a form of empathy), seeing every other being as an extension of oneself. This flame of understanding fuels every aspect of my work with people to trigger transformation.”

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