Whoever could have foretold?

Parikrma is soon going to be 20 years old. When I started Parikrma Humanity Foundation 19 years ago, I did not think this far ahead. I began with a great deal of nervous energy, and I believe I transferred much of it to my early colleagues, who today I call, my Pioneers. We would think from day to day and very much live in our then present and only concentrate on how to correct the past and not think of the future. We knew we had to survive and sustain ourselves so that deprived and marginalised children could thrive with the opportunities we wanted to provide. We walked from house to house in the slums of Bengaluru to identify children who were not going to school and would never will. We identified the girls in households who were being groomed just as future caregivers and maids in their own homes and insisted that they came to school too.

The three meals we provided lured many parents to enrol their children in school even if they had no idea of the quality of education we were providing. Soon the news went around, and people from nearby slums gathered to get their children admitted to Parikrma. I remember with amusement how many local leaders tried to curry in favour of their electorate by bullying us into giving admission to their candidates. Many of them, I heard, had even taken money from these poor people with promises of a seat in Parikrma. Their applications were dismissed summarily, much to the annoyance of some circles. We were a committed group, mostly women, who wanted to teach the most deserving, and we found some hidden strength to fight these pressures and hurdles to pursue what was fair and just. We made mistakes in some of our judgements but were humble enough to acknowledge them, correct what we could and move on.

We have thus moved on and come this far. From one rooftop school, we have grown to four schools, a junior college, a teacher training centre, and have started adopting several government schools. That is wrong if these numbers give any impressions of a real estate empire. All our buildings are rented spaces, some residential homes and even a bakery converted into schools. We had to and continue to deal with various problems of uncertainty, increasing rent, inconvenient spaces, and no chances of expansion, but what we gained were time and opportunity. We needed to be close to where the children lived to ensure that our schools quickly became safe havens in the community. Our empire is our children and our people.

We have had more than 85% of students graduate from Parikrma Junior College every year, pursuing higher studies and opting for professional courses like law, design, hotel management, HR, medicine, engineering and even forensics. They are now employed in high-value and respectable jobs in well-known companies. They are the capable workforce that Parikrma is consistently contributing to the nation. Why just the country, even the world. I have students running businesses and in profitable careers in faraway Ireland, Australia, Thailand and Dubai. All our students are equipped with confidence, awareness of the global world, a sense of equality that they have been introduced to, and fully conscious of their civic responsibilities.

While all this is happening and making us proud, I have slowly become aware of something I had not thought about before. Parikrma has emerged as a reasonably large employer in the education world. While we began with just 11 staff members in 2003, we are today employing nearly 160 teachers, 30 school operation staff, 7 in administration and accounts, 11 in IT and resource mobilisation, 7 social workers — that are working with the parents in the slums and 16 in ETC, the initiative we have started to improve the government schools. We have also outsourced some of our specialised services, and these staff members work more or less like Parikrma employees. So a jump to nearly 250 employees from 11 is no small feat. And this number keeps growing, although we do our best to do multi-tasking and find creative ways to keep our numbers and costs low. But the reality is that the more initiatives and projects we take to serve the community, the more people we need. As a growing organisation, our challenge has been, and I guess they will always be, to get the right people that join us not necessarily for money and a career promotion but because of their intense desire to serve society and do it professionally.

While reflecting the other day, I was amazed to find out how many Parikrma students have come back to Parikrma after graduating, got their professional degrees and even worked elsewhere for a couple of years. We welcome them with open arms because that is what we have always wanted. I have publicly announced several times that my dream is to hand over the running of Parikrma to our alums when the time is right.

And preparation for that has already begun. We hire Parikrma alums not necessarily for emotional reasons but for rational ones. They are most capable and suitable to take this Parikrma movement forward. They are the ones who will change the narrative of the lives of the poor and tell the story differently. Who can deny that a Parikrma alum-trained psychologist will understand our children the most because of shared history and experiences? We find that the Parikrma alums that have joined as teachers (nearly 18 of them) are excellent in class management and teaching our kids most innovatively and interactively. They do not think that all the extracurricular activities we get engaged in are a waste of time because they know how all this has benefitted them in the outside world. They are not appalled at our lack of conventional harsh disciplinary practices because they have blossomed in kindness and love that they have been showered with when in school. They do not get rattled when their students do not show them superficial respect and ask probing questions or even disagree with them because they grew up in an environment where they learnt to be fearless. Our students are excellent social workers who address issues with much more empathy than regular community workers with theoretical knowledge and minimal real-life experience. Our student community workers present themselves as examples and role models in the slums they are working in and can be convincing. We now have alumni working in our resource mobilisation and accounts team, and they bring a new perspective to their work, which is refreshing and entrepreneurial.

So today, while the future is slowly unravelling and many stories are being rewritten, I can only tell myself, “Whoever could have foretold that all this would happen 20 years ago?”

We are now better prepared for the future.