Girish Ananthanarayanan FINAL
Thu, 4/21 3:22PM • 9:58
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
work, teachers, schools, programme, girish, government, building, india, millions, children, podcast, biz, talk, transform, crises, create, accounting, compassionately, fin, class
00:09
Hello, and welcome to the fin biz 2030 building resilience podcast series. This episode features highlights from the better leadership better future webinar hosted by Angaris Angia. In this episode, we hear from Girish Ananthanarayanan , who was introduced here by Angaris.
00:36
Next up, we have Girish Ananthanarayanan, who is the CEO of a major nonprofit that works with state and local governments. Right now, the mission is to transform learning in government schools. And he's currently leading a programme with the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh to provide teacher training and development programmes for 270,000 government school teachers across 100,000 schools in the States. That's amazing. So welcome Girish, the floor is yours.
01:16
Thank you so much Kia. So if you guys can hear me, and if you can see me, I think you should realise that you are extremely, extremely lucky. Because what that means is that you have a digital device in your hand, you have been protected from COVID. And you have a working internet connection, which is more than what you can save for millions and millions of people around the world. What we do at people, which is the organisation that I'm part of the leadership team of is we work to help every child live up to their potential. What that and how we do that is by working deeply with governments to transform education systems, think back to school, or think back to your childhood, when you were in school, I'm pretty sure that behind your success and behind where you have reached, at some point, there is a teacher that toiled really hard behind the scenes, to make your life what it is today. Now, when we look at, you know, there are India's a large country, and there are also many, many education ecosystems like India, and in India, we have 250 million children of school going age, out of which 160 6 million go to government schools, and there are about a million government schools in the country. Now, these numbers sometimes just blew my mind, especially when I realised that when we are talking about, you know, a million is just compounded so much. And when you look at it at the heart of the solution to making their lives better, comes meaningful teacher student interaction, when we talk about the government system, and when we talk about the education system. Everyone's there are millions of people that are teachers that have education officials, that are government officials working really, really hard to make a difference, they are going to work every day. And yet studies show that in India, at least. And for much of the developing world, this would be true. About half the children of age 10 country, the secondary textbook, and about three quarters of them cannot do division in mathematics. And when we have a situation in our hands like that we are at the edge of a crisis, because the next generation will end up being one which does not have the basic life skills, which will help them get through and does not have the critical thinking skills, the problem solving skills, and all the things that you require to survive in this ever increasing complexity of this world. And that's where we come in, what we do is we work with governments to create meaningful teacher student interaction, and to create high quality teachers. And at the heart of this, how we get there is by creating visual exemplars, which build belief as to what is possible, creating supporting teachers through skill development, as well as working with the ecosystem to monitor and mentor teachers better.
04:25
We have three large programmes that we work on the first where we have schools that we run with about 1000 children. Imagine in this country where most children can't read, or are nowhere close to their grade level expectation. We have our kids in our schools and these are these beautiful, brilliant children from the poorest families which earn about 30 to $50 a month on a normal basis. Here we've created these islands of excellence these beacons of excellence, where we have worked with the government to build them and we have people from Prince Charles to To The World Bank representatives and two teachers from other states who come to see us schools, we also have taken the secret sauce of the schools. And like he said, we're working with about 300,000 teachers across a massive state in India, which is larger than the UK, to help them to become better teachers that educators. And this by the way, began as a US COVID response programme. Working with an excellent progressive bureaucracy in the state, we managed to really work hard to transform it. Now, let me just back up a bit, this is my story. But if you really look at you know who I am, I'm honestly I'm, I'm a child from a small town in India, who was given the right opportunities and the right chance to grow. And today, I have this opportunity, thanks to technology, thanks to a lot of mentors who I have, and thanks to the state of the world that it is in today, to really have as a single person, reach out to millions, and in this call 1000s. So what is it that I was reflecting as we were preparing for this? What is it that I really, really wanted to share with you who are young students or accountants from around the world, or others who are listening in. And there was one thing, one life changing moment that I remembered, I was sitting in, I went to a wonderful business school also. And in one of the classes a class in fact called investigating corporate social irresponsibility. The professor said something which changed my life. What he said was that, if you really think about it, in this class, we're being explicit that we will talk to you about what issues there are with companies, but we're being explicit about it. But every single class of yours, including your accounting class, is an ethics lesson in itself. Because in accounting, they are telling you what to put on both sides of the balance sheet. Now, when you look at construction of a dam, it is a accounting that tells you what to value and not to value the destruction of habitat or to value the loss of human lives that it might incur, but to value the cost of the materials that goes into it. And so keeping clearly in mind, that the system that you are in, is built towards a particular direction. And the linking that to your sense of what your compensates, is going to be important. And specifically in that, I would just say three things. The first, and it's brilliant how what I was thinking is exactly also what for reserve is saying I think the first point that she made was resonates very strongly, which is being compassionate. Because ultimately, I think the one thing that drives us forward in times of crises is, is caring about somebody else's difficulty, being aware of it and doing what is in your power to help them. But at the same time, do make sure that they you take care of yourself, and that is self care even as you work compassionately to support others. Second, collaboration, I think the one thing people ask me, what is the one thing that has changed between before COVID. And now in how nonprofits work? What we've realised is that people are working really hard. But today there are new collaboration, seeing which otherwise were not there before. And in this new world, where we work together, there is more potential, when all of us come together like we have in this platform today. And finally, there is the part about building resilience and building adaptability. Now, with an ever changing world, when we took a decision that we would work only with governments, one of our board members said that is brave, but necessary, because it is extremely difficult to work with large systems that are always in motion and have such strength. But at the same time when you want to reach millions, it becomes perhaps one of the critical ways and the critical decisions that we must take. So that's it from me, thank you so much for the time. To recap, find your music, do what you love, and when you do it, do it compassionately, collaboratively and building your own resilience.
09:19
To hear more podcasts, or to find out more about fin biz 2030 Go to fin biz 20 thirty.com Join the conversation using hashtag fin biz 2030 Invest 2030 is a joint initiative between One Young World and Chartered Accountants worldwide. This podcast is produced by Big Top multimedia. The original webinar series was produced by be their productions and Big Top multimedia Special thanks to pexels.com