THE VISIONARY MAN

Life is a collection of many short and long journeys that guide us to live a purposeful life. To follow my passion to give my contribution to the society, I joined a 2-year fellowship journey and moved from the north, from the origin of the Ganga in Uttarakhand to Ratnagiri, part of the Konkan region in Maharashtra. The idea behind joining this fellowship was to get new learnings and self-development and simultaneously to work on life skills and value education with school students. It is here that I met Sudhakar Sadashiv Shirke, who comes from a rural family that has contributed vastly to social change. He is someone with whom my life’s values and vision have aligned, and has helped me to design and deliver my project in a much better way.

Ratnagiri is famous for its alphonso mango and beautiful beaches. Along with it the place has a nomadic youth population, who migrate in search of employment. This condition is driven by the limited livelihood opportunities and a proximity to major cities like Mumbai and Pune.

In the first 5 months of my fellowship, I visited nearby villages and schools to interact with community members, sarpanch and school staff to get a better understanding of the situation on ground. I was also keen to learn about the challenges facing the community. While reaching these villages is a major challenge in itself, because of the limited transport options in the village, especially public transport, people  are supportive and kind and often come to my aid. Additionally, due to the presence of JSW port and thermal power plants there is a continuous movement of lorries and trucks. Many of my visits have been made successful by the lift given by the local people and truck drivers. It was only because of them that I have beeb able to reach these villages for meetings in a timely manner.

These visits provided me better understanding and insights to design my project on life skills and value education. To implement my project, I met various stakeholders and presented my project idea to get feedback, in order to strengthen it. In one of those meetings, I met Mr. Sudhakar in the community library. We discussed my project idea, and he shared his life struggle of getting higher education due to lack of financial resources in the family. He was not able to pursue higher studies due to his family circumstances and in 2000 joined a local NGO working in the area of women’s cooperatives development. This turning point in his life paved the way for him to contribute to social changes in the society. It brought a mass movement of women in the area to form a women’s cooperative. Since then he has been an active member of many social movements that took place in this region. Seeing his intention, attitude and passion towards social change, people supported him to become the board member of different committees working for the welfare and betterment of society.  He was the secretary of the school management committee (SMC) of the oldest school of Khandala, holding similar responsibilities in the women’s cooperative of Khandala and also holding the same position in the local organization that is running the community library in Khandala.

During continuous meetings and discussion, he gave me special time from his busy schedule for better understanding of the idea of the project and how it will be helpful for the development of children. While understanding that this education project has been designed considering physical, emotional and mental development of learners by building a positive relationship and supportive environment for learning by involving different fun games and experiential learning activities for imparting life skills and value education. He showed his interest and provided support by inviting me to attend the monthly SMC meeting to present my project to the committee members. This was my entry point to the first SMC meeting and presenting my project to the SMC members for approval.

He made sure with SMC and school staff that sufficient time allocation was given to me from the school schedule for conducting sessions. In addition to this, he gave me the freedom and the on-ground support to build a supportive learning environment by creating a positive relationship between teachers and students. With his support, I was able to organise a one-week life skills’ summer camp in school during summer vacation in April 2024 and alongwith that, a 3 day camp in the community library for students studying in other nearby schools. While conducting the 3 days camp in the community library, he closely observed the different activities I undertook with the children and it made him better understand the role of a supportive environment, positive relationships in developing a better learning experience among learners that leads to holistic development of learners. Further he supported my idea of carrying out teachers’ training programmes on psycho-social support and life skills among learners. He also helped in translation and approval of budget from the SMC for installation of short value stories in the school campus. He treats me a family member and invites me to festivals and cultural programme in his village.

The first few months of the fellowship were very challenging. The community was aware about the challenges on ground and even had the authority to support my project, but due to some shortcomings my project didn’t start. But in just 2 meetings with Mr. Sudhakar, we crossed those barriers that were blocking my pathway and opened new avenues of opportunities. From his life struggles, he understands the role of education in developing cooperation among society rather than competitive education to create a better society.  He aligned his vision and mission with my vision to develop consciousness among learners, and helped me move many mountains to make my project a success. I am grateful to have met him and learnt from him.