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I grew up being a self-centered kid in school.
Sure, I could do fast math, but I did not give a shit about others who could not.
I could calculate the cube root of 738 in my ahead when I was just 12.
When my friends struggling with basic fractions and
decimals asked me for help, I turned a blind eye.
I hadn't mastered calculus yet, the National Math Olympiad was around
the corner, and my parents and teachers had big expectations of me.
I needed to focus on myself, and
my friends would have done the same thing if they were in my place.
I received straight A's in the math and sciences but
if there had been a class for helping people, I would have got an F.
The national education system in India, like in many parts of the world
is predicated on the idea of relative performance and competition, and
this dominates our view of success.
I didn't think it was possible to break out of this belief until I met two
people four years back, Anju and Xabi, two kids nearly half my age.
Anju just 15 years old lived in a village that did not send girls to school.
But rather than try to move to a different village and get her education,
she devoted her energy in changing the minds of people in our community.
Her determination changed the system, and
she has now had more than 200 girls to enroll in school and become educated.
Xabi just 16,
convinced his school principal to start an animal shelter in their school campus.
While he, and his fellow classmates have rescued more than
300 injured dogs to date.
I was fascinated with Anju and Xabi, for the first time in my life I met
teenagers who cared deeply about others, and took action to make things better.
I certainly wasn't like that when I was in school and neither were the kids I knew.
So, why was that?
Why were Anju and Xabi the outliers and not the mainstream?
The more I thought about it, it all pointed to our education systems and
the extreme competitive pressure that is put on kids.
You got good grades, great now get better grades.
You made it into a good college, fine, now get into a better college.
Life becomes this competitive race and
this race engulfs children in an inward looking me focus mindset
rather than developing an outward looking we focus mindset.
Children leave schools with impressive grades and certificates and
get decent jobs, but they miss becoming empathetic, responsible,
conscious citizens of this world.
But should school systems choose between academic excellence and empathy and
compassion, I didn't think so and I chose to do something about it.
I quit my job and started a social enterprise to try and tackle this issue.
As part of our research, I read a lot about people who have dedicated their
lives towards the betterment of society, and how they develop their passion for it.
That's when I was introduced to Bill Drayton, Bill is credited by many for
coining the term social entrepreneur back in the 1970s.
Ashoka the nonprofit he founded support social entrepreneurs in more than 40
countries today.
But what's interesting is this, when Bill was 11 If he had started an initiative
to help his classmates by creating a class newspaper.
He skipped a lot of classes because of his strong commitment and
wasn't even home most evenings.
When his mother died, he found correspondence between her and
a school principal.
His mother was concerned she asked, why is a fifth grader not in your school or
at home?
The school principal wrote back saying, trust your son, and
please don't show you're anxious.
But he was unaware of this at the time, but when he thinks back on it,
he says bless principle who encouraged my ability to make an impact in this world.
We found two patterns in the stories of people like Bill, number one,
most develop their passion for creating change by going through an outward
centric change making experience at a very young age.
And number two, they had at least one adult who believed and
supported them in their journey.
Inspired by these learnings, our team designed a program for middle school and
high school children.
Our idea was to encourage the kids to identify social or environmental issues in
their home, school or community, support them as it took action to try and
tackle these issues and appreciate them for their efforts.
Our role as facilitators was to do three simple things, encourage,
support and appreciate, or what we call the ESA framework in short.
Who could be against such a program, right?
Yet we couldn't convince a single school in the first two months.
Schools rejected us outright saying that they did not see any value and
that children needed to focus solely on their academics.
We finally offered the entire program to schools for free for
an entire year to get them to try it out.
Not an ideal start for us but we took what we could get.
If convincing schools and parents was tricky, thankfully working
with children was the exact opposite, children loved our program.
They quickly identified the problems they wanted to tackle and
passionately got to work.
Chandan just 11 years old told us I want everyone in my school to be
physically fit.
His school did not offer a physical fitness program, so he gathered a group of
other sixth graders and started a student run yoga class for everyone.
Even two years since our program ended, the children still run their yoga class
and in fact have expanded their initiative to five nearby schools.
Incredible, Jonathan's teacher recently told us that Chandan was
an extremely shy kid at first.
But once he got a platform to solve a problem he cared about,
he discovered a new side of himself, Chandan is no longer that timid child,
he's an empowered agent of change.
Kielty just 15 started the Code Red initiative to spread awareness about
menstrual hygiene in underprivileged communities near her school.
She was so successful that now three years since her program,
she's helping an NGO create awareness about cerebral palsy.
Told me in my 10 years of schooling,
I never had an adult who encouraged me to think about helping my community.
But as soon as I received that encouragement, my life changed and
now I want to continue tackling meaningful issues for the rest of my life.
This was common amongst all the students.
After working with more than 25,000 children over three years,
our biggest realization was this.
All children are born with empathy and
compassion, the challenge is to remain with it as we grow up.
These humane values can either thrive and flourish with encouragement and
support from adults or they can be completely stifled and suppressed.
Which is what happens through our education systems.
Which one do we all want for our children, for our community?
We have big problems today political polarization,
growing inequality, climate change,
we must fundamentally change the way we are raising our children.
We must set them free from this inward looking me focused mindset,
to an outward looking we focused mindset.
Looking back, I don't believe my career would have been any less successful if I
had more empathy and compassion as a child.
But I can't help but
wonder how much better the lives of my other young friends would have been?
Would their careers be better, would they have passed the along the empathy they had
experienced onto their own children?
Academicians, researchers and advocates are fighting to include empathy and
compassion into the formal curriculum at the institutional level.
And each one of us, you and me, can make a difference at the individual level.
Implement ESA, encourage the children in your life to think about and help others.
Support them when they start something meaningful,
and appreciate them for when they put in the efforts.
Be their champion, the one who keeps their empathy alive so
that no matter who they become professionally or
where they go in the future, they create a better world for everyone.
Thank you very much.
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