Over the past two years, we have been mentoring our school's support staff and the Sai Bal Sansar students in essential technology skills, which in the near future are going to be necessary for the new "mundane" that we are converging at. We have not only taught them but have also learned so much about life from them over the course of our time with them. I am still reminiscent of our lessons, how we used to explore technology and its various applications be it using the microsoft office platform or doing simple yet fascinating things such as working on mobile wallets /online shopping platforms/ online coursewares. I have always been fascinated by the passion for learning more that the people I taught had and that is one thing that still motivates me to date. With my limited time teaching the school support staff, I have taught them things which would help them continue learning independently at their own pace with the use of online courses. khan academy and youtube.

—Varun Datta

Teaching Life Skills to Students and Conducting Discussions with Teachers

Immersing in the local context to support innovation of the teaching methodologies at Sai Bal Sansaar

For my service project, I boarded the school bus every Wednesday to drive to Sai Bal Sansaar and teach kindergarten students and a class of students with special needs, and sometimes conduct discussions with their teachers. Entering the narrow sultry street, stepping into the iron gates of an extremely modest school building, only to spot bright smiles on innocent faces of little kids waving their hands and shouting ‘Hi didi!’ is a truly unforgettable experience. No matter our teaching methods – creative and fun or not – our students were also looking at us with curious eyes so that learning continued even in cramped classroom environments. This experience was not only a chance to build on creative-thinking and teaching skills, but also a golden opportunity to build compassion.

— Gariyasi Garg

With our suitcases packed with summery-cotton clothing and our hearts brimming with excitement, during the last week of August, six of my peers and I took off from Delhi for a 5-day trip to Auroville – an experimental township near Pondicherry which houses people from 54 countries. From enjoying Kabaddi and Cricket, to engaging in creative art activities to merge our cultural realities; through all the experiences, we developed valuable bonds with the locals of Auroville, the organizers and the Turkish and Tamil students – which was undoubtedly the most cherished part of this trip.

We carried out three engrossing community projects – teaching English to students in a government school, eco-construction and organic farming. These provided us an opportunity to learn entirely new skills – we made bricks from mud and constructed arcs, and we made our own beds for sowing the seeds. At the same time, they required physical hard work under the sun and getting a bit dirty! Similarly, as teachers, we were challenged to overcome the language barrier between us and the Tamil-speaking students.

Not only this, we took part in liberating meditative sessions of different forms – creative visualisation of the future, yoga, a comprehensive musical meditation that took me into a trans, and – my favourite – a dance meditative session. And surfing gloriously atop the waves was definitely the most invigorating, and remains a major highlight of the entire trip!

—Gariyasi Garg