Design Thinking for Innovation

Project: Promoting girl child education in rural areas

Challenge:   Storytelling is a great tool that I use in suitable situations of design thinking. I’m a member of  a missionary organization and along with my mission-mates, I work in a specific area which  involves promotion of girl child education in the rural areas. Despite many government  schemes like free enrolment, mid-day meal etc, most of the schools in rural area see not many  girls attending the school. In the underdeveloped villages, girl children are perceived merely  as homemakers in their adulthoods. Hence girls are not sent to school from their childhood by  their parents. The parents think instead of education, their girl child should learn various  activities like cooking, house cleaning, knitting clothes etc. The biggest challenge is how to  change mind-set and perception about girl child.      Selection:  During my interaction with the villagers, I understood they work sunrise to sunset to earn their  daily wages. Their kids also involved in many activities with their parent. Occasionally whole  family watch movies in television and hardly they do interaction with people. They have  limited knowledge and information about the whole country and the world. I realised  storytelling is the best tool in this situations so that I can narrate stories of great women in the  country and the world and inspire them to dream big about their girl child. I spent a lot of time  with many parents individually and in a group.     Application:   As a part of missionary work, I connected with many parents having girl child. During the  storytelling, I gave many examples of great women in the world. As they like religious stories,  I started with mythology and highlighted great women characters. I talked about great women  in various fields like politics, sports, science, industry. I picked names like Marie Curie, the  first woman to win Nobel Prize; Mother Teresa; JK Rowling; Malala Yousafzai; Kalpana  Chawla and many more. I was trying to explain them how these women grown up and created  impact in the world. I was also explaining that many times great women personalities were  born in ordinary families but good education and training helped them to flourish in their lives.     Insight:   During storytelling I could see sparks in their eyes. They were asking many questions and  wanted to know more about the childhood days of these great women personalities. They  understood they had a wrong perception that girls can be only homemaker. Clearly it was time  for me to open up stories from my family. I explained how my wife came from an ordinary  family and become an executive in a reputed company. This worked really well. All these  parents promised to send their kids to school and promised that they will send their little babies  to school and support them to grow whatever they want.

Approach:   Based on the circumstances I believe storytelling has really worked in this project. I could see  big impact. Now most of the parents are pushing their girl child to go to nearby school. They  are making more communication with other parents and discussing the future of these young  buds. I simply believe sometimes a little story can do a lot of good.  I shared this story with other missionary agencies and suggested them to apply in their  respected areas. I think it had a big impact on people there. Though storytelling has worked in  this case, in future I’d like to combine storytelling along with visualization tool as narratives  paired with visuals are one of the most effective tools for communication so that it can have  much more impact.

