Inspire Ed: Inspiring Education

This weekend, St.Stepen’s College, New Delhi, hosted ‘Inspire Ed’, an event, by Teach for India, where entrepreneurs, educators, policy makers and corporate supporters across different sectors came together to make the event a success.

There were workshops, which were conducted by more than 40 speakers who were experts and leaders in classroom instruction, school leadership, research, entrepreneurship, child development, management and arts.

There were panel discussions and group sessions hosted by educational leaders from across the world. It brought together some of the most creative and innovative professional to transform the educational system in India. There were many workshops that were being held by many educational leaders, likeGeeta, Dharmarajan (Founder of Katha) who talked about using stories to transform lives. Abha Adams, Educational advisor of Step by Step, talked about Putting “Learning” Back into Teaching, by creating cultures of learning in a school community; and many other speakers.

One of the workshops that was held, was led by Tiffany Cheng Nyaggah, Executive Director and Co-Founder of Dignitas Project, which assists and helps in the educational institutions in Kenya.The workshop was about transforming schools through Leadership, Learning, Innovation and Impact.She explained that they are trying to create leaders throughout the educational systems, which would help the community and schools to develop and flourish.

She explained that she wanted to create a system, where the leaders act as if they are holding a mirror up to the community and schools with compassion.

Through Dignitas Project she also plans to:

• Empower schools with the data about where they stand.

• Validate and inform training and content.

Dignitas Project has devised a Module, which are divided across 3 weeks that will help the leaders to execute the plan to systemize and change the present state of the education system.

The Dignitas project has helped 475 teachers in 4 years, across 48 schools comprising of 17,000 children and has started 12 clean water projects in Mathare, Nairobi.

Ms. Nyaggah concluded her workshop, by talking about the Key challenges, followed by a question and answer session.

Inspire Ed was also a host to many schools which participated actively in the event. There were NukkadNaatak acts, and stalls which were clustered by happy and enthusiastic kids. Some small school children from National public school came up with a brilliant and innovative idea to transform used items to remodel it to something else. They called it Deconstruction for Sustainability.

The group had seven children, Ishita, Mehak, Rohan, Arpita, Jatin, Rudra, and Saurav.

They showed us many objects and games that they had created, by recycling bottles, syringes, safety pins, cartons and had transformed them in beautiful objects, like school bags, sand clicks, chandeliers and many such objects.

There were many other organizations, which came together with Teach For India to make Inspire ED, a success.