• It is difficult for me to sit and write reflection of year 2024 because biggest milestone of my life - ‘Marriage’ is in Feb 2025. Prep for that is going on. Me & Nidhi are also figuring out where to stay after marriage and where to work. Because of my family situation we need to stay near to my hometown Padra - Vadodara. So technically my year is still running.. but still I will try to put what ever is coming in the flow.

• In Feb 2024 we did ‘A matter of time’ exhibition. It was a culmination of 3 -4 month long journey with Imapana (student from BeMe school). I am very grateful to BeMe for giving me this space to experiment like this. It was long time wish to do this type of work with children. I am planning to write article on pedagogical aspect of this experiment.

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• In Feb I have visited Chennai beach to see turtle nesting with Harshit (student from BeMe). It was very new experience for me.

• I met many inspiring & intersting people this year - Jane Sahi, Arun V, Anand Chitipothu, Paras Chopra & Aakansha Gaur, Nature Classroom team , ATREE Water workshop, Sci Gallary BLR taeam, Anish & Junuka

Moving back to Vadodara

• Left bangalore and moved to Vadodra : I shifted to BLR on Dec 2022 to join BeMe and spend more time with Nidhi (She was studying in Azim Premji University that time). After finishing MA in education at APU, Nidhi took job at org called ThinkTac - Science education company. She didn’t liked the nature of work. It was more working in content development side rather than facilitation / working with children or teacher. She was more interested in facilitation that time. She left the job in 4 months (Jun 2023 - Sep 2023). She took break of 7 months (Oct 2023 - Apr 2024 ) during the break she did small projects like helping me in setting up the time exhibition, book translation for nature classroom, etc.

  After one point we both felt that we need to move somewhere else to work. Because joing BeMe was not the option for her that time. If she gets the job somewhere in BLR, everything is very far and expensive. I never wanted to leave BeMe. It was my dream job. But nothing was working out.

  We tried shifting to Pune. I got the job at Anubhuti learning center. Similar alternative space like beme. But Nidhi was not getting appropriate job. So we canceled the option.

  During that time parents were encouraging me to come back to vadodra, they were feeling lonely, their health were not ok, we wanted to be around them so we can take our marriage conversation forward. So we decided that let’s go back to vadodara.

  Some how it worked out. I had a talk with Ravi bhai and he offered 1 year grant. I got job as content developer at Pratham Foundation. Aaakansha also offered 1 year - Escape Velosity Grant to us. So with all of support, we came to Vadodra on 30th April 2024.

  Nidhi also got ‘Teach for Nature Fellowship’ to work in Nature Education in Vadodara.

Engagement - Mihir & Nidhi

• First thing we did after moving back was event of our formal engagement with friends and family members. It was tough. 10 people coming from Kanpur in train staying in small town like padra, managing whole event, managing everyone’s ego - emotions - expectations.. it was tough for me and nidhi both. But we did it. We came out of our comfort zone and did it.

Happiest moment was when our friends came to the event and stood with us.

Work at Vadodra

• Nidhi rented out flat and started working with Rameshwari ben and Amit bhai.

detail report about the work - here

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Work at Pratham

Pratham was roller coaster experience. In the beginning I was very happy that I got remote job so I can stay in vadodra and also do other work. Secondly it was content development job in environment domain. My team was producing videos for topics like climate change, plastic literacy and more. There was interesting project called creativity club in our account too. Where we need to develop prompt videos for children age 10+ yrs to foster their creativity, collaboration, communication and problem solving skills.

Overall work was interesting but I could sustain there for more than 7 months.

Few reasons :

• It was remote team with large scale, deadline driven project. Working in high peace environment with remote team was new experience for me. I didn’t feel connected to team and the factory approach which we were using for content development. I felt very disconnected from ground.

• my skills were not very good for this type of work environment. I mostly worked with children or teachers. On ground. Never worked with canva - excel - chatgpt. So it was good learning.

  I first time wrote script for videos I first time made posters & videos on canva I was part of team of the project at this scale for first time where my content goes to thousands of children pan India.

  I learnt how to make content for creativity and other 21st century skills. Mainly we were using design thinking activities, replicating already available activities in our format. But making it useful for large scale project is also good learning.

  I learnt about how large scale orgs works, I learnt little bit about partnerships and funding

  best part of my work was coordinating with nature educators from all over India to nature education camps with children at different location. It was good that I already had network of people in the domain.

  I left pratham on 15th Nov 2024. Took few days back break and joined Project DEFY (25th Nov 2024) as subject matter expert - self directed learning. It’s 3 months remote assignment.

  during pratham days I first time experienced serious anxiety. Stress. Somehow it was very chill for other team members. But I was not handle constant stress, constant communication & coordination.. it was very bad phase.

Finding Work & expectations from home

• Aakansha and Ravi bhai offered the grant for the one year. I left the pratham so now we didn’t have any backup for money. most of the pratham’s salary is going to be used in marriage event (all the shopping, jewellery and all). Nidhi has some money coming through fellowship but that also she was not able to continue because multiple things going on at home. so we reached out to all social media, all the friends with the request. we got many calls from alternative schools from south, many orgs, individuals.

  we are very very grateful to all the people who reached out to us with offerings. People who connected us with other people, people who thought about us.

  Because of my family situation we need to stay near to vadodra / ahemdabad. My parents wants us to stay near to them. Because of their loneliness, because of their health, because their insecurities , because they feel socially confident when we are around.. for whatever reasons they are not happy about we leaving vadodra and go far from them.

  one more aspect to it is they want Nidhi to be house wife kind of person. Helping my mother to do all the work, not taking independent work. My home is based in Patriarchy system. so to stay far from it we need to find work-stay option where we are not very near to them and not very far.

  This year very big chunk of my time went to fight and manage the balance of our values and expectations from family. Friends helped me a lot in this. thank you rameshwari ben, mitali ben, many other friends.

  Now we are stuck, we have very limited option at vadodra / ahemdabad for meaningful and well paid work. After eliminating many options right now we left with very few :

  1. Mitali ben’s school : Ravi bhai is willing to continue grant next year also, Aakansha also offered that if I can help her in some admin work of ’escape velocity grant’ she can offer grant for one more year. With this assurance we can move to Mitali ben’s school 2hrs far from vadodra and work there. Next year we can again search for grant. (Inlaks Grants, The Circle incubation) Also we can find out some part time / remote work if possible.

  Pros : we can work directly with children, we can develop nature education curriculum / do action reasecrh. Nidhi and me can work on our health, we can also be near to my family. We can also work with other orgs in Vadodra because it is just 2hrs away.

  Cons : Instability of funding, we might feel lonely sometime in village.

  2. Gopaldham learning center : it is an Ashramshala in Jashdan near rajkot / chotila. 5hrs from vadodra. they are looking for school leader kind of person.

  Pros : there are only 70 children, we will get full freedom to do meaningful work. We both will get work. Good payment also

  Cons : this is new place. We don’t know the founders and team personally. No friends, we will feel lonely. We need to leave work we have started in vadodra

  3. Balgokulam : it is an early childhood research org based in ahemdabad.

  Pro : good salary. My role will direct working with children and researching about early childhood curriculum. so new learning opportunity. we can come to vadodara when ever is needed, it is just 2hrs

  Cons : new set up don’t know what exactly my role looks like. It is new org started in 2023 so don’t know the future. We will need to find job for nidhi.

  4. Eklavya, Bhopal : with Aakansha’s funding we can go eklavya bhopal and start working there with libraries. I am not sure that ravi bhai will give funding for that.

  Pros : Eklavya family will be there, lots of new people, friends, projects

  Cons : instability of funding. We need to leave our work which we started in vadodra. We might not get access to children like school. Because we will work with libraries.

  I am eliminating BLR right now but we have shortlisted some org if we want to go : creative school, beme, project DEFY, seed to sapling, etc.

Health

• Me & Nidhi both went to Nephropathy this year at Nisargupchar Kendra - Gotri, Vadodra. It is wonderful place. I am suffering from stomach problems and Nidhi is suffering from skin - hair issues. (apart from our mental health) We tried following the diet for month or two.. it was magical.. it works. eating millets and doing yoga. After one point of time it got difficult for us to manage the routine and making food at home. but we want to start it again when we get new place to stay and work. This year I want to start doing regular exercise & eating healthy food. (This very basic and obvious thing but very hard to do )

Golu

• Nidhi’s brother Tanishk aka golu was also there with us in Vadodra for few months. Nidhi invited him to take break after his 12th exam and explore options other than joining privet engineering collage. It was mistake… we were not ready. it was difficult to make some one self directed learner in short time. Also against his will. It was good learning for us to see what is happening inside us when situation like this come on our face. what happens inside us? , can we empathize ? it was tough time for me personally.

  he didn’t find meaning in this type of exploration time, he became phone - game addict, he bought new iphone and it was game changer for him… in short some mistake from our side, some expectation from his side.. it didn’t work out. I was so happy when he went back home. I was genuinely concerned and still I am concerned about his future. I never thought bad about him but our expectation didn’t match. We were super busy in our work we really didn’t give proper time to him… it was wrong timing.

Reflections : Proudest moments of the year, Things you don’t like about this year, something you learnt about yourself

• Our work got recognized : ebird - meet the educator article - feeling proud.
• I could manage to do local khoji event even with the stress and work load of pratham. I could have done better if I have time. I really didn’t get time for the facilitating the project.
• We (Nidhi, Mihir, Impana) managed to do ‘A matter of time’ exhibition. I was on cloud 7 :)
• This year I wrote regular weekly notes on my website from week 12 to week 52 = 40 weeks = 10 months. I never thought that I will continue this habit. But I did. I am proud of it.
• In first week of Dec I visited BLR to attend wipro partners (my reflections) forum and meeting children at BeMe. Meeting children from 12+ group was a joy for me.

• This year was very stressful and I felt serious anxiety many a times. Because of nature of work at Pratha,Home / family issues

• This year I first time tried fund raising. I pitched our work and managed to raised 9L rupees for a year from individual donors. I am very very grateful to them for trusting us.

• I did session with corporate team for first time. Thank you Mitali ben for co- facilitating.

• This year I contributed / spent big amount of grant money and pratham’s salary money for marriage prep, which I didn’t like. I wanted to use that money for children or save it for future. Any way I am happy that we did camp from that money.

• This year also I am part of Child Development and learning course at Eklavya. I co facilitated sessions this time. After the physical workshop we as team to need to be more active to respond the participant’s need. But I felt that other team members are busy with other work and not able to give priority to this. It is frustrating for me.

• This year we (Nidhi and Mihir) took many workshops and sessions with different age groups. In 2025 we want to take up one project and do deeper work in that. We will take up the project of developing curriculum for Nature Detective program (age 3 to 11yrs) and for older age group we will work with children from sai’s angel foundation. We will also plan to do action research kind of thing with Nature Classroom.

• I took logistic responsibility for the residential camps we did this year. I invited Nidhi, Nishtha and Prerna for facilitation. It was a good experience for me. I learnt about my self that I enjoy doing this type of work also

• The idea of sangha - tribe - community got stronger in mind this year. I learnt that if you want to walk on this path of alternatives you need strong sangha.. and you need to selflessly contribute in that sangha

• This year tested my and nidhi’s bonding.. hard time.. stress.. things we hated came back to us…but we are strong & together. Thank you so much Nidhi for being you.

• All these years I was very confused about my offering in education. I am not a subject teacher, I am not a teacher trainer, I don’t want to start NGO to scale things.. what exactly I want to do ? This year I got some answers :

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What next ?

• Work front : till 15th March 2025 - Project DEFY’s work is there.
• Need to figure out work after that. Gopaldham and Balgokulam people will reply in mid Jan. After that we will take a call. I am mostly inclined towards going to mitali ben’s school for 1 year and then going back to BLR / stay back if we get regular funding. If we go to mitali ben’s school, we will take up curriculum development project for nature detective and also collaborate with nature classroom for action research & material development.
• I want to continue work in vadodara. Specially with sai’s angel foundation. We (Rameshwari ben , Ashish bhai, Saurabh bhai, Nikita ben, Suraj, Mihir & Nidhi) started one fellowship program for teenager. It’s kind of swaraj university model / beme model / self directed learning / relationship model. It was a longest wish to do this type of work with youth. I am looking forward to that.

• I am prying to universe to give me strength to manage my wedding event peacefully

  After writing this much I still feel I missed something..but it’s ok. I will update here if I remember something. let’s hope for the best. At this moment I just want to say thank you to Nidhi for always being with me in every situation. Thank you so much to all my friends and extended family.