I was very inspired by this talk. Kiran Bir Sethi speaks about how her Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India has infected over 100,000 children all over India by learning life’s most valuable lesson: “I can.”
She starts her talk with one word, “Contagious.” Laughter, passion, and inspiration are a few examples of good things that are contagious. Her question is simple. Why do only some people take advantage of their power to change things? Why not everyone. The answer is also simple. We as adults and leaders need to teach our children that they can make a difference. She outlines a prototype process that can consciously infect the mind with the “I can” bug. She says, “If you blur the boundaries between school and life, children go through a process of Aware (they see the change), enable (be changed), and empower (lead the change). Not only were the children at Riverside learning that they can make positive changes in the community, they felt empowered, which led to them outperforming the top ten schools in India in Math, Science, and English. After seeing the results in terms of grades, people started to pay more attention to the children of India. Since 2007, the city of Ahmedabad closes down the busiest streets in India once every two months and converts it into a playground for children.
The Idea is described by Geet Sethi, a world champion and citizen of Ahmedabad, “When a city gives to the children, in the future, the children will give back to the city.” First, 300 children at Riverside, then 20,000 children in Ahmedabad, and by 2009 the idea was spread to all of India. They created a tool kit, converted into eight languages, and given to 32,000 schools. They said take one idea, anything that bothers you, choose one week, and change a billion lives. And they did. From East coast to west coast, and from north to south, children were giving solutions to a diverse range of problems. India was successfully infected.
The most important takeaway from this talk for me was the affirmation that when adults believe in children and say, you can, they will. It was very inspirational to see that this was happening in India and could possibly happen here in America if we apply that same process to our school systems. The process of aware, enable, and empower could give our children in America that same belief that they can do anything, and they would. The future of our country is our children, we should start believing in them now.