How to Build Your Portfolio
Document every single project you do. Documentation is not just about taking photos or videos — it’s about capturing the learner’s journey in a way that others can learn from. How did you facilitate? What were your session design principles? What are your reflections? Essentially, build a playbook so other people can learn from your successes and your failures.
Build in public. Put out regular updates on social media about what you are working on. Updates should have photos, videos, and short captions about your activity. It’s about the process — so keep it raw and spontaneous. Not planned photoshoot posts. Real, in-the-moment process.
Your social media — Instagram and LinkedIn mostly — is your first portfolio. Keep it focused and oriented towrds your ethos. Instead of only marketing your programs, offerings, or work, share real insights that are genuinely helpful to others. For example, if you run nature-based learning workshops, don’t just post green photos of children. Show something real. Talk about an interesting fact about a species. Talk about what research is telling us about why nature exploration matters for children. And then tell parents and educators how they can do a simple activity with children at home, in their backyard, or at a public park. You are empowering them. You are not just marketing — you are sharing real solutions. That’s how engagement grows.
Your network matters. Fellows and alumni from TFI, India Fellow, Gandhi Fellow, APU, or TISS get access to strong networks quite easily. But if you are none of those, you need to build your own — and you can. Email people. DM someone if you genuinely like their work. Congratulate them. Reach out the moment you see even the tiniest possibility to collaborate. Don’t fix the agenda — keep it open. Share other people’s work on your social media. This puts their work in visibility and signals that you care about the cause, not just about who is doing it. Whether you do nature education or someone else does it in your city — it doesn’t matter. What matters is that children get good nature education.
Volunteer as much as you can to build your portfolio. Whatever work you love and want to do in the future — go volunteer with the people already doing it. You admire Organisation A’s program design and want to learn from how they work? Offer your skills. Offer your time. Offer whatever you have at your disposal. That is how you refine what you know, make a small but real contribution, build your network, and grow your portfolio — all at once.