Teachers are viewed as mentors of young people in the classroom, responsible for moulding the new generation into future leaders. India with its guru-shishya tradition has especially placed teachers at the helm of all learning and this importance is also reflected in the 2020 New Education Policy (NEP) as well…

‘’Young people were most invisibilised through the pandemic, with extended school closures and no attempt to include their voices in policy making. Yet, they responded to the uncertainty with grit and compassion — for themselves and their families and communities’’~Suchetha Bhat, CEO, Dream a Dream The COVID-19 pandemic caused an…

“Since the lockdown started, I didn’t get a chance to play and meet my friends. For many days we weren’t allowed to go anywhere. I was really sad that I could see my friends only on the phone and couldn’t play with them. Now that schools have reopened, I’m really…

As the 2nd COVID -19 wave crippled India and chaos surged, Dream a Dream formed a core team to respond swiftly to the emerging needs from young people and their communities. In a matter of a week, the team that had over decades worked on life skills related interventions pivoted…

On 23rd March 2020, India went into a country-wide full lockdown with a 4-hour notice and life as we knew it changed overnight. As we tried to make sense of what was happening around us, we offered an invitation through a 3-part article that we wrote. It was an invitation…

India is the world’s fifth-largest economy with a GDP of $2.9 trillion according to the World Economic Outlook (October 2019). India aims to become the fastest-growing major economy in the world piggybacking on its biggest structural advantage of a young population in an ageing world. Presently, around 1 million people…

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next.” ~ Arundhati Roy As the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the globe, closure of schools remains one of the…

A 3-part series on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on India’s education system and an invitation to a new global movement in education — #WhatIf #KindnessIsTheNewNormal — Part 3: How could our education systems respond to the COVID crisis — An Invitation to a Global Movement to transform Education Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. (Repeat) Kessler, the world’s foremost expert on grief, in a recent HBR article outlined the 6 stages of loss that we are experiencing across the world in response to the pandemic. He outlines that the discomfort we are feeling is ‘grief’. Both…

A 3-part series on the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on India’s education system and an invitation to a new global movement in education — #WhatIf #KindnessIsTheNewNormal — Part 2: What is the current crisis teaching us about our education system? As the impact of the pandemic unfolds, it is becoming abundantly clear that traditional learning models and schools have ill-equipped us and our children to understand, make meaning, and respond and adapt to the uncertainty and vulnerabilities emerging from the current crisis.