Imagine a world where everybody is happy. You may say I’m a dreamer, but then, so are they. What’s more, they know that destination Happiness lies along the road; it’s just a question of looking. Universal love and happiness – that’s what the Vishwa Seva Educational Trust, or VSET, aims at. It’s ambitious, even impossible, some might argue, but you can be sure they don’t let that slow them down.
That’s why VSET came up with the idea of ‘living values’, built on the belief that these are inherent and all one needs to do for a child is kindle them from time to time. “We work with students from class seven to 10,” says Narayanan P.K., who has been on VSET’s executive committee for over a decade now. “The reason we pick that age group is because those are the formative years when the heart and the brain work together.”
In 2005, the programme structure was complete and the Joy Club was formed. “The Joy Club was our flagship programme and was conducted in classroom environments for one period every fortnight,” explains Mr Narayanan. Their facilitator interacts with students about a particular topic every week. VSET is very particular that the topics they choose are always true to everyday life, so they can actually be lived every day. “Values and life skills are very interlinked. For example, anger management goes hand in hand with patience and courtesy,” says Mr Narayanan.
The programme is very in tune with the Indian Constitution, something else that the VSET team is particular about. “Not many of us are aware of what the Constitution requires of us,” says Mr Narayanan. “It’s also in keeping with the UN guidelines, so what we do have is an integrated model of exposure to values, life skills and the ability to excel. We want to bring values and life skills to mainstream education.”
The outcome is visible, as students who develop interpersonal skills become better listeners and grow more confident. In the seventh grade, the focus is to interconnect awareness with co-creation, the next year, emphasis is placed on behavioural refinement, then comes orienting oneself toward success and during the final year, when the child is in the tenth grade, the focus is on success itself. “It’s important to remember that the programme is not devoid of goal orientation or ambition,” Mr Narayanan points out.
What’s more, the Joy Club wants to make value education fun and interesting, so it will be something that students actually look forward to every time. And more importantly, it encourages thought. “We never tell children what is right or wrong, every kid has his own original views which he is allowed to express,” says Mr Narayanan. “We merely present a situation through a story, a play, a group activity, a game or a video and every student is made to participate.”
As a result, while the children learn to express themselves, they learn something far more important and that is to become accommodating towards what people around them have to say. “The content goes through several filters before it is presented. We take great precautions to make sure that it is non-religious and non-sectarian – it has to be completely devoid of discrimination.” Also, the students learn that it is not okay to demean something just to project something else in a better light.
The programme, which was completely free, was reaching out to about 20,000 students across the country. Now, it is moving into a different dynamic in order to reach out to even more. Schools are beginning to pay for their own facilitator, who will be trained and evaluated by VSET, free of charge.
“We provide them with the entire content, methodology, tools, training, quality assurance and evaluation. In the future, we're also looking at giving away the ownership rights to the schools themselves,” says Mr Narayanan. Perhaps one of the nicest things about this facilitator approach is that anybody can join, as long as they have good communication skills and truly love children. That’s all they want, because like they said, everybody has the right to be happy.