The young achievers

• Challenge and Selection:

I have been associated with a volunteer-based global organization named Aviva  for the last one year. Teaching and mentoring is a passion of mine, which I pursue by teaching  unfortunate and needy young children (up to 6th grade) every Sundays with this organization.  I still remember the initial days when I found it difficult to build rapport with the children. This  was really important as it made imparting education easier (by getting their undivided attention)  while also made for a cause for them to come on a regular basis. With time, I found that some  of these children did seek inspiration and had dreams that they wanted to realize. For me, it  was about helping them to visualize what their dream looks like while also making it  entertaining for them so as to keep them interested and because of their tender yet  impressionable age (approx. 6-10 years) and a sparkling nature, using their creative  imagination via storytelling seemed like the most suitable way to meet this objective.

• Application:

Time was of the essence, we met for four hours every week in a public park which was followed  by a break of 6 days. The stories needed to be short, captivating, fun, inspiring but most  importantly relatable (even to a 6 year old). After interacting with them for a few weeks, I got  an insight into their family backgrounds, their daily routine and their likes and dislikes. For  genuine inspiration, the stories needed to be real and presented in such a way that meets all of  the above criteria. For a few children who wished to be a doctor, I recited stories of my aunt  who is a doctor. I told them about her practice and the respect she gets in the society. A few of  them wanted to be engineers, I told them about my experience in engineering college and of  the various practicals we did on “big machines” and of the “biscuit factory” that we had visited.  I told them about the school which is owned and run by one of my aunts and of the various  activities (like drawing, going to the zoo) which were held in most schools, so as to motivate  them to go to school regularly.

Gradually, the rapport started to build and I started seeing them come earlier to the class just  to talk to me and play with me. A few who got inspired, started sharing their problems like  negligence of their parents towards their studies, lack of stationary to draw and write which  then we as a team were able to work on by talking to their parents and providing them with the  stationary.

• Insight and approach:

Storytelling is an excellent tool to add that extra dimension of being humane to a design. The  connection that is made as a result of this tool is better able to communicate values pertaining  to the objective. While designs can be finalized by all sorts of analysis and analytical  experiments, storytelling gives it a humanly touch which in some cases can be the most  influential factor. In my case as a teacher, fancy books or a smart board might not have been a

good solution early on when I am trying to fix the lack of interest and genuine inspiration to  do something worthwhile.

Bringing people together to the objective by the use of values, emotions, memories, and  imagination is the essence of storytelling. People are inspired by certain characters in a novel  because they can relate to it or are inspired by it and if we can touch someone’s heart by our  values and experiences that creates a far better response. The next time, when I am helping a  student or a college junior or a subordinate in my office, I would try to help them solve their  problems by similar experiences that I have gathered so far.

