Some progress, a lot left to be done

I had talked about some of the difficulties we are facing in the last post. Things have not been exactly smooth from there, but by God's grace we have been able to make some progress. We are trying to take one step at a time so that we do not falter at any place.

But one thing which I have learnt lately is that persistence pays. You need to keep working on something to make things happen. The key to success is sometimes not getting frustrated and giving up but to continue for that extra mile, for some more time.

I have taken a course in which my Professor told me how when he had to get something done for his own company, he had to pursue that issue consistently and persistently. I have had some similar experience, but did not fully realize until he told me about his own experience.

How is all this related to Prayaas and the issues being currently faced? It is again persistence that came to our rescue. After the issue arose, we quickly took stock and met the concerned people about what their problems were with us. One by one we tried resolving each concern, so that we do not leave any weapon in the hands of the other person.

We have been going to the municipal school almost each day for the last 15-20 days. It becomes a little difficult for we need to go at times when we might have classes. So, co-ordinating becomes an issue. Ideally we would like the same person (s) to tackle an entire issue, but that may not be possible due to time and capacity constraints. To the people we are dealing with, we still need to appear as one entity.

On the first day when we went to school, we got a lot of flak from 4-5 people. Three of us went and we were bashed up as if we had done the crime of the worst kind. We were caught unaware of the situation in which we were in and also were not fully aware about the bargaining power we had. So, there was no option but to listen. We have come a long way from there. Though, the criticism has not stopped, it has decreased a lot. And we are more able to put our stand point forward. Going through proper channel and knowing how the hierarchy works helps a lot.

There are two broad issue we are tackling. One was the compound thing which I talked about in the last post. The other was getting leaving certificates (LCs) from the municipal school for the kids we have gotten admission into private school. The first issue is still where it was when it started. On the second issue, it seems that we should be through in a few days. The authorities which preside over the school were helpful in getting this issue resolved. We also did our fair bit in getting new children admitted to the municipal school to compensate for those that had left them due to us.

We managed to get some LCs and are in the process of getting the others. When we got the first batch of LCs, the person asked us to stop coming to the school daily. Her words made us realize that it was because of the fact that we constantly probed her about the LCs and persistently when to the school that she got fed up. One of the reasons for giving us the LCs was that she wanted to get rid of us and our daily presence.

So, if somebody is not doing some work that he / she should have done, just probe then again and again. Send mails, meet them on a regular / daily basis. Sometime or the other they would have to budge and respond in your favour. I saw 'Shawshank Redemption' a few days back, and one of the characters wanted some funds from a central office. So, he sent a letter to the office every week. After 6 years, he got some amount. But he was not satisfied with the amount, which was less than what he had demanded. So, he started sending two letters per week. the letter which cam after 6 years mentioned one thing,
"We now consider the matter closed. Please stop sending us letters."

They had to budge someday.

It's not all easy

We have been facing a few issues for the last few days. Initially, we did not realize the severity of the problem but now we fully do. Here, is how it all started and where we are now ...

June 30
Some of us needs to go to the Municipal school, in the compound of which the Prayaas school is conducted. Today, they had changed the lock and even after lot of efforts from CB (one of our teachers) and others, they were not able to get the keys. they had to take the kids to the garden near Vastrapur lake and the studies suffered. We need to go meet both principals - morning and evening and ask about the reasons. They have refused to ... and we need to talk to them about this ...

July 1 - day
WE HAVE A PROBLEM!! The evening principal is on leave but has left strict instructions not to give us the compound. We intend to speak to the princi whenever she returns but things don't look encouraging. The school people very categorically told us that there is little scope of we getting the compound.

Second issue is ...

While the morning principal has been co-operative enough (so far) the word from the evening one is as discouraging as above. On this front we need to speak to the principal when she returns ...

July 1 - night
To solve the Prayaas school premisis problem our first effort would be to speak to the principal of the municipal school and try our best to convince her. Plan B is to try to get permision from ...; Plan C is ...

July 2
We went to meet the municipal school principal and needless to say it wasn't a very pleasant visit. She is still stuck up on ... and insists that unless we speak to her superior she won't relent. As far as meeting the superior is concerned we can pretty much rule it out coz she hinted that he would only be coming around diwali and she also wouldn't let us go meet him/her. However, on the compund issue she seemed to be slightly accomodating. All she wants is to hear the nod from the morning principal who in turn hasn't shown any opposition to this. Her stance is that she's ok if the evening principal is ok. Hopefully this will pan out in our favour once we speak to both of them. On the other issue ...

July 3
Spoke to the morning principal at the municipal school (finally somebody who spoke softly and was ready to listen). She said she isn't authorised to give permission as she has been given instructions not to allow us to use the compound but she's agreed to speak to the concerned person and put forth our case for ...
However, this she says needs a couple of days and has asked us to come on Monday despite our insistence on getting it done tomorrow. Personlly, I'm not very hopeful of any success on this front but its still worth a try I guess.


The next few days / weeks are very critical and we need to take the right steps so that the events turn out so as to not affect the lives / studies of the kids.

Stall at the Entrepreneurs' meet

An Entrepreneurs' meet was organized by Centre for Innovation Incubation and Entrepreneurship (CIIE) at IIMA. It was an initiative initiative to bring together entrepreneurs from IIM Ahmedabad who quit cushy jobs to carve out their own corporate empires. The event was organized last weekend and we thought that it was an excellent opportunity to create awareness about Prayaas as well as generate some funds.

We were greatly supported by Pringoo.com, which allows you to create, share and sell your unique designed products such as t-shirts, mugs etc. We managed to get decent amount of funds through selling of t-shirts and general donation. As Prayaas was started only about in 2004, the previous batches had little idea of any such thing going on. Many alumni visited our stall and were extremely happy that such an initiative is being pursued.

Here are some photographs of the event