Make a Sustainable Place to Play in the City

It has been an amazing year in so many ways and it would be interesting to chart the lines of our journey, of what we’ve learned, but thats perhaps best shared as a novella, an adventure reduced to metaphor when we’ve got our heads around it. In the meantime, perhaps the swiftest way to share is to say, we made Season 1 of The Children’s Scrappy News Service. Our pioneering, original children’s TV show aired on Colors Channel, Rishtey every Saturday and Sunday for six weeks. One million families tuned in every afternoon. What did we learn? That Rishtey was the right channel for reaching rural audiences, but our audience still does not have smart phones, so there was no digital response. They consumed. Watched together, entire families, grandma, grandpa, uncles, aunts, children and neighbors told us they wanted to make a place to play and they really wanted to learn how to swim. We live in an interesting time. Impact is measured by how much delight there is online and if there’s none, then we’re not sure what to do. We know children loved it. We watched them watch the show at home, at school, in wide open fields. We listened as they asked us about where the show was made, who is Dheeraj, Valesca, can anyone join the scrappy news service? As we put the lid on this year and label it, as one for the shelf, we’re thankful to be given a second chance. With funding for Season 2, we’re going to work with a channel that not only reaches our core audience but has a robust mobile/digital platform and reach. We might even be in four languages at once rather than just one. For now, we’re just excited we get to do it all again. At school, it’s been a year of wrapping up Grade 9 with what we’ve learned and working with the Government of Bihar to define a new project, The Class of 2023 or Get a Plan, it has two names so far. It is new content for Grade 10-12, featuring and exploring the jobs available in Bihar, from becoming a sports coach at school or becoming a policewoman, to starting an enterprise that fulfills a pressing need: garbage, clean energy. We’ve been researching the new stories, listening to young people, teachers and communities, engaging with industry and venture investors to try to make a real, actionable plan for each story’s transition from school to work, knowing that we’re still working in the realm of fiction, the unchartered territory of making it through Grade 12 and transitioning to equitable work of your choice. Fiction in 2018, especially for girls and young women, perhaps in the coming years fiction will become reality. At the end of 2018 we know this, silence is golden and sometimes, you are given a second chance to give a bold idea another try. Thank you India.

Links:

• The Children's Scrappy News Service