Step 1: Acquiring Gurus

For acquiring Gurus, we visited the places commonly visited by an elderly citizen of Gandhinagar, viz., parks, roadside benches and temples. But, after interacting with around 15-20 elderly citizens, we realized that the people who just came to sit around and chat in the evening, were not motivated enough to perform any kind activity for themselves.

Since, we needed motivated people to influence and make an impact on the younger generation we strategically located places in the city where people with such a mindset would be found. We narrowed down our places to the District Court (retired law advisers), the City Gymkhana (sports enthusiasts from various backgrounds).

We found quite a number of elderly at the City Gymkhana of sector 24. We interacted with around 10 elderly, out of which 4 were ready to be on board with the GrayGuru initiative.

Step 2: fabricating framework

After step-1, we added an intermediate step before fabricating the framework, because we realised that the Guru and us were unfamiliar with each other, especially because we introduced ourselves as a startup team.

We met Mr. Dinesh Panchamia for an informal meet to get to know him better, and vice versa. His hobbies, interests, professional career, his achievements, etc. This help us in building a professional trust with each other. We also gave him the GrayGuru goodie bag at this point, so that he could trust in us better, and also write down any ideas or ways to commence the session with school kids.

Mr. Dinesh Panchamia - The Guru

• Profession: Mechanical Engineer, Thermal electricity generation plant (Class 1 officer)

• Hobbies: Vedic Math, Chess, Coding, Badminton, Bridge game

• Achievements: National level chess player, National level bridge player

• Other interests: Knows 3 foreign languages, viz., Germam, Russian, French, likes to learn coding softwares like python, Understanding and implementing Vedic Math, playing sports to stay fit

After building the guru bank we segregated the institutes according to the different boards, education system like value based, co-curricular, specific subject oriented and start setting up the meeting with different type of schools.

Meeting the Principal of the schools and telling them about providing a collaborative service for both the students and the elderly. We had a very different experience at different school. Most of the schools were very excited about the idea of the workshops and sessions where we are bringing elderly to share their lifelong experiences, skills and knowledge with the students. We were also asked to provide the yearly plans of different type of workshops and sessions for different age groups. One of the school also asked us to conduct the session for the teachers of the school.

Though at one school the Vice Principal did not support the idea of bringing the elderly to the plan since he believed that introducing the fresh young talented people would be much more fruitful for the school.

• Rangoli international school

• Podar international school

• Infocity Science Jr. College

• Radiant School of Science

• Kameshwar International School

• St. Xavier's High School

• Mt. Carmel High School

• Swaminarayan Dham International School

Opening of session

We planned on opening the session in a fun interactive way, so that the students, the Guru, and us can get comfortable and free around each other.

Since the students will have fresh minds, we planned that the Guru (Mr. Panchamia) starts with the teaching of vedic mathematics implementation

Takeaway

We gave the students takeaways of bookmarks with inspirational quotes, as a memory and a motivation.

We also gave the institute manager and the Guru a takeaway for a first successful session on behalf of GrayGuru team.

Final Impact video

Insights

• We had arranged for a cab for the guru (because we felt it can make a person feel dignified), but it caused quiet a few delay in the overall session

• The session did not go entirely as planned. The Guru started of the session with his introduction, which was supposed to be a guessing game later. Last minute impromptu had to be made in the end note, which will probably happen and needs to be taken care of by a representative of GrayGuru. Or care needs to be taken that such an occurrence is avoided.

• The children who had come for the session were from the age group of 10-15, which becomes a big gap according to the academic learning of the younger students. Due to this, some students did not grasp quickly the teachings of the Guru. Hence, one year difference at the max will be should be considered for future reference.

• Some students were completely disinterested in the session, which leads us to make another step in our service framework, i.e., introductory session. This introductory session (can also be a video) in which the gist of the sessions can be explained, after which only interested students can participate allowing better results and experience of both, the Guru as well as the students.

• The puzzle round, in which we gave away chocolates to students who solved the fastest, students were encouraged to participate and the whole class was re-energized.

• Feedback sessions with the Guru and the assigned teacher needs to be taken for a better understanding of the effectiveness of the session.

• The overall session was a success, though we were not very satisfied with it, because we thought it could have gone better.