Let me introduce myself, I am Jnana. I am currently working as Senior Operations Manager at ThinkZone. At ThinkZone, all of us are a team and the best part of working with a team is that you learn from the experiences of other people as well. So for this blog, I thought I would collect our experiences from working at the grassroots and share them to give all of you an idea of how ThinkZone’s programs work. Taking forward with the idea, I set up an online rendezvous with all of my team members and started noting down their experiences and mine as well.
Let me start with my experiences:
I did my graduation from KIIT University just before I started working with ThinkZone. Through this, I had the opportunity to work in my own city Bhadrak where I had spent the last fourteen years of my life. I started working very closely with educators, parents, and children who were part of various programs of ThinkZone. To work with them, I had to take trips across the district, various villages, and corners of the city I never knew existed before. In the next two years, I have known Bhadrak like never before and I am very proud of it. In your job, there is always that one moment that inspires you for life. I was fortunate to have that special moment on the very first day. I was asked to talk with educators and understand their issues. I also had to develop a plan to curb the high dropout of educators from the program in that particular area. But even after talking to the mentor for an hour I couldn’t understand at all how could I help her, and I felt very frustrated. One of my seniors in the organization saw my frustration, took me aside, and said – “Not everyone knows the answers to all questions. To work is to learn and keep on learning.” I have not forgotten that and till today every time I am faced with a new challenge I learn.
I can keep going on about my experiences but now I would also like to introduce one of my closest friends in the organization Manoj Mallick. He is also Senior Operations Manager at ThinkZone. He has been in the organization since its beginning days and has experience in working in the grassroots far more than all of us. When I asked him what inspires him to work he says that he was inspired by Binayak Acharya (Founder of ThinkZone)’s idea to do something for the education of children from under-resourced communities. Manoj says that he had always wanted to do something for society, in college he used to volunteer a lot, and now he could do that as a part of his work. He has seen a lot of ups and downs in these years but he has never backed down from a challenge in all these years. On his experiences, he says “I have seen ThinkZone from the beginning it’s like my own child. When ThinkZone started, it was very difficult for us to make teachers, parents understand the value of the program. But now we are working with the government and everybody knows us and respects us in the villages. Even though we have come so far, we will not stop here. Today we are working in four districts, our goal should be to reach every corner of Odisha”. Manoj always gives us the courage to move forward.
An interview with the team members wouldn’t be complete before mentioning Lopamudra. She had started as one of the first few mentors at ThinkZone. Her work ethics and managing power have always amazed us. From being a mentor to currently managing all the centers in one block of the Cuttack district, her own story is an inspiration. She shares an inspiring story – “There is a village that gets cut off from the main area during the rainy season and children cannot go to school. For those 3-4 months, they are also deprived of education. Due to all of this, children here have suffered so much so that there are fifth-graders who cannot recognize letters. When this came to our attention, we chose an educator from that village, trained her, and helped her to open her own center. Learning could continue even in those 3-4 months and within a year we could see a difference. Now the children of that village are performing very well in their respective classes”. It is one of such stories that she says keeps her inspired and motivated to work every day.
Now I will talk about the most energetic person on our team, Priti. From social media to learning centers, from training to managing educators, she is just awesome at everything. She brings a unique energy and enthusiasm to work which is infectious. When I asked an educator about her, she said, “I’ve had a lot of problems at my center. Some of the parents had issues, students were irregular to the classes, and many children were dropping out of the program. At first, I was a little hesitant to tell Priti madam all these problems. But once I told her, and since then there has been no such problem at my center. She managed everything very smoothly. During the whole thing, Priti madam has also become a very good friend of mine. All parents, students adore her, respect her”. This is what one teacher said, if I will start writing all compliments about her, well then one day would be less.
I am not done here. Because ThinkZone is a big family and each and every member adds value to the organization. So, I will keep on writing about them in the second part.
