The Journey has Begun

I thought that I had come well prepared mentally that the journey which I am going to embark upon is going to be an extremely tough one. But every step is telling me that nothing prepares you for the actual test. You just need to survive.

I have doing that every day now. After landing, in I was almost blank on how to get into the first gear when I was suggested by a Summer camp idea by the Principal of Nangal Shahidan and Sameer. With a blank slate, did it. The initial response of only 4 students put me back but developed strategies to raise that number to 16 over the month.

Now again I am facing the same mental challenge. The tuitions started in Nangal on 15^th. Yet I have only 4 kids. Though I know it’s going to be a slow process, but possibly as an Operations person, I am not trained to be slow. The strategy till now has been word of mouth publicity and keeping the fee at a low of Rs 500 for 3 subjects (English, Maths and Science) in 2 hours. Logically speaking, we would be able to finish of the syllabus in maximum 5 months and thus 2500 for 3 subjects.

I am not sure if we have to rethink on the fee. But right now I am just keeping my head down and preparing the kids for exams in September expecting that the result would speak for itself. But inside I am still restless for not being able to get to at-least 12 kids which was a decent number to start with. I am also restless because the more parents delay in getting the kids, the greater would be the learning gap.

The realities on the ground are starting to bring out the gaps in my theory which is jittering me.

1.       One of the biggest gap seems to be that even Rs 300 seem to be high for the parents. But I am going to stick to it as anything below it might be financially not feasible.

2.       Other biggest gap is that I was of the opinion to get a vehement support locally but in my own village, people fail to understand the motive and the concept. All of them are following the wait and watch policy.

3.       This is taking the pace off my project and rendering me slow which means its going to drain my savings faster than the pace of the project. This brings me to the next challenge of topping up my income.

Today is a new day and I am still standing tall. Let the challenge bring it on!!! I will think over a solution.