Make a Sustainable Place to Play in the City

At Going to School, stories are the tools to learn. Everything we know, learn or share is through the medium of stories, either read or narrated orally. Going by the rate of unemployment, the future working generation are currently in school without the right set of skills to either get a job or create a job for themselves.  We are creating a set of design driven stories that each teach a set of entrepreneurial skills like making a budget, how to make strong social connections, learning how to negotiate, take a risk, innovate etc. We derive inspiration from real life success stories of entrepreneurs who take risks, identify problems and solve it by starting an enterprise.  

Our story books are read by more than 1, 30,000 kids in Secondary Government schools across Bihar & Jharkhand. Last year we printed one book for each child so that they can own it, take it home and read it with their friends & family whenever they want to. This is our third year in Bihar, and as we are just around the corner with this year’s annual report, s data shows that kids have announced their verdict- They love the Be! Books and the amazing way each book has been designed differently from them.  Children also loved playing the games and skills challenges that come as part of a complete book. This year, we have come up with five completely new story books that teach a universe full of skills, and with each book, there is one exciting new game that is followed up with an adventurous skills challenge.  We would like to share our new releases of summer 2015 with you.

Book 1: The Indian Train Journey: A Postcard Adventure. This book introduces the concept of entrepreneurs, enterprises and the different skills they have. The story revolves around the postcards exchanged between a brother and a sister. The brother meets new entrepreneurs in his train journey and writes back inspiring stories about them and their skills to his sister.

Book 2: The Book of Leaves. This book is based on a theme of Solution for Pollution and how the solution of using leaf plates is universal. The story starts with Archana, a real life entrepreneur who makes Areca leaf plates in Karnataka and how the same leaf plates are then made by our real life entrepreneur, Jitesh who lives in Bihar but makes leaf plates out of Sal leaves locally available to him. It focuses on the power of using local resources and being environmental friendly.

Book 3: From here to there, women drivers are everywhere. The book is based on how a young girl stops driving as she grows older, because she sees no role models, or other women drivers. However, in her search, she finds a large number of women drivers who drive autos, bikes, cars, and even tractors breaking the stereotype. This book gives an inspiration to women and young girls who ride cycles and bikes but eventually stop due to societal pressures. In a world where there are women pilots, astronauts, train drivers, tractor drivers, young girls should never stop riding their cycles.

Book4: Plan Bee is based on real life entrepreneur Neelakantesh who starts his own beekeeping enterprise. The story presents a solution to the problem of depleting nature of our farms due to the use of harmful toxic chemicals. The benefits of honey bees that help in increase the productivity of the farms as well as provide organic honey. This story introduces the concept of beekeeping enterprises that can help us save the farms.

Book5: Seher’s bolt of lightning. The book focuses on finding a solution to the problem of no electricity and how the protagonist does extensive market research before starting her own solar light enterprise. During her market research, she also meets our real life entrepreneur, Rita, who runs her own solar enterprise in Bihar.

With every skills book, a game was designed to teach a consecutive skill.

The Perfect Match Game that teaches how an entrepreneur looks at a demand and solves it for his customers by the perfect enterprise. With four set of shuffled cards- Demand, Supply, Enterprise and Customers, kids flip through, discover, and find out the perfect match for each demand.

The Cash Flow Game teaches children that in an enterprise, there are many odd situations that come up every day or every month. It is essential to keep a track of every transaction, money that was earned and money that was spent in a statement. This game comes with a board and a deck of cards with different situations where the player decides which situation to go with- to make the payment or incur the loss in the following months.

Social Connection Game teaches the importance of social connections and how we can connect to anyone through simply 5 people, including you. The concept is based on the theory of six degrees of separation which states we can connect to anyone in the world with the help of six people, including you. Children also add the place where they met a particular connection and the skill they used to reach the next connection.

The Marketing Game teaches children to choose between available options and make their best marketing strategy for their enterprise. The board game lets two players compete towards a better marketing strategy which runs against a time frame of 1 minute in each round.

The Business Plan Game teaches children how to make their own business plan by choosing the best options from a deck of cards for nine different categories that include which enterprise, what problem it solves, the risks, the customers, the skills etc.

Our brand new five books are also available to read online on our digital library www.goingtoschool.com as well as on our new book app Skool https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goingtoschool.books, which can be downloaded from the Google Play Store.

Links:

• http://www.goingtoschool.com