New Perspective To Problem Solving
Mindfulness And Understanding Nature Of Wandering Mind
Accelerated Learning & Tangible Outcomes In A Short Duration
Jennifer Carroll, VP of Program from BBBS and Mohan Naidu, Founder and Head Coach of WAVE Global in conversation, discussing the journey they shared over 4 to 6 months leading up to the pilot workshop in Philadelphia on 6/15/2019.
WAVE workshop activities are designed to exercise the brain and provide insightful life lessons that provide our youth a new and universal perspective of problem solving and understanding laws of nature / wisdom principles. Every activity in the workshop is included to accomplish a meaningful purpose. Following are the two life lessons included in this session:
The wandering
nature
of
human mind is the root
cause for why 95% people
in the world experience
miseries that create the
psychosomatic diseases
that humans suffer.
Alpha meditation brings
you in the present moment
eliminating the root cause
of all psychosomatic
diseases..
Developing
awareness
through use
of right brain principles of creative
visualization.
When youth experiences
the feeling of sense of confidence,
you introduce the possibility of them
looking forward to learning and
eliminate the possibility
finding alternatives that distracts them.
With accelerated learning
capability, students learned first 15 elemets of Periodic table they
never knew, within 10 minutes.
With the unconventional and
unexplored super learning methods
that accelerate learning, you
introduce in youth, the motivation
to learn, instead of fear of failure.
THROUGH PILOT WORK AT RENUKA DEVI VIDYA MANDIR, MORWADI, PIMPRI, PUNE, MAHARASHTRA, INDIA–411017
Through his personal experience and observation for over 20 years in India, Singapore and North America, he decided to address these gaps through building a framework based on what he learned and applied for over decades in his own academic and professional life with exemplary success. Another missing element which was extremely instrumental in his own success was the belief in wisdom principles, core thoughts and laws of nature that are universal in nature and agnostic of any religion or culture. He lived his life with those principles and saw them work very well. He then decided to create a repeatable, sustainable framework based on all those learning methods and wisdom principles and thus, WAVE framework (Wisdom Anchored Values Education) was conceived in his head in 2014. He started creating the framework that addresses these gaps.
Accelerated learning i.e. using our brain’s inherent capabilities to absorb, retain, recall, articulate and communicate any information effectively.
Optimal Learning i.e. learning with highest levels of awareness where there is no dilution or loss of information, which happens due to minds nature of wandering away from the present moment.
Experiential Learning i.e. learning that directly translates to clear understanding and therefore a sense of clarity and confidence about the topic. This involves thinking skills such as critical, analytical, creative thinking.
Note: Text 215-688-3790 or 309-846-5964 to confirm attendance and get location details.
WAVE Global LLC was recognized as a successful social enterprise and invited by the Professors of Social and Cultural Entrepreneurship course at University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD).
Social enterprise by definition is an organization that is created to address a social need first and secondarily to generate profits to pay for its expenses and sustain as an organization to continue the mission. UMD invited the founder of WAVE Global LLC, Mr. Mohan Naidu to share his learnings and insights during the journey of starting and sustaining his social enterprise with the Professors and students that are studying Social and cultural entrepreneurship post graduate degree and Ph.D. course at UMD. Here is the transcript of the entire lecture by Mr. Naidu along with the Q&A between him, WAVE team members and the UMD professors and students. The transcript provides insights into the 7 principles of social entrepreneurship that Mr. Naidu shared with everyone. You will also see few testimonials from the students and Professor about their experience attending the lecture.
Following is the transcript of an interactive session between Mr. Mohan Naidu, coach and founder of WAVE Global LLC with students and Dr. Aparna Katre, Professor of Social Entrepreneurship course at University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD).
I would like to share my journey in a simple manner as it evolved – journey of being a social entrepreneur. Along the way if you have questions, I’m happy to answer them. I will share the things that worked for me. Some of this may be applicable or relevant for you, and some may not. Idea of starting WAVE was first conceived in my mind in 2014. After 20 years of exposure to academic and corporate world around Asia pacific, North America and part of Europe, I felt the need to address the gaps that we have in our early childhood education system. There are several topics still missing in our education system that are needed to create a wholistic individual, not just focus on Academics. So, that was the central theme of the idea I had – the idea that eventually became the company. Mohan
University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD)
University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD)
University of Minnesota, Duluth (UMD)
Mohan: Mission statement of WAVE Global is very simple – Awakening the inherent potential of every child. We fundamentally believe, every child is born with lot of inherent potential, lot of which remains untapped/unrealized because of the way the education is imparted. With that mission, the vision was to build a structured framework that can be easily implemented, repeatable and scalable using a workshop format or working with schools, colleges and universities where we integrated it with how learning and teachings happens in schools. To realize the vision, the first thing I did that was to work with couple of schools in India where I taught children of 7th and 8th grades that were old enough to understand, absorb and see the difference for themselves on what happens when they learn in conventional manner vs a new way of learning. In the pilot that I did for a year in India, I worked with teachers and students in a small school, where every week, I would spend 5 to 6 hours teaching lessons around these 5 areas – accelerated learning, optimal learning, experiential learning, communication principles and Wisdom and value education. At another school, I trained few teachers that in turn taught students in their schools. After a years’ worth of work on the ground knowing the real challenges they face, putting in the context of where they are, what evolved was a format that now I could take and repeat it in multiple cities across the world – that’s what I did in in the USA in Summer of 2017. I extracted the essence of the one-year pilot, converted into a one-week workshop format, and conducted series of workshop in Dallas-TX, Bloomington-IL, Atlanta-GA, Denver-CO, and Fremont, CA. Hundreds of students attended these paid workshops where we observed very consistent and effective results. Parents, teachers, students and community leaders endorsed that WAVE framework works for them and it can be integrated with academics. Now, we feel we have a tried and tested product that addresses a social need that we wanted to address through social enterprise.
Mohan: It’s a great question Kevin. Thank you for asking that. When I first wanted to talk to people about my idea, I thought that this is such a common problem and therefore, it will be easy to talk about the value proposition of my idea, but I was wrong. Most people recognized the problem, and gave head nods because most parents believe that their children go to school and they get loaded with lot of information, but very little learning happens. When I approached the schools and introduced this idea to teachers and parent groups, first thing they told me is that a lot of people come up with the great ideas and they do short term workshop, some of them are beneficial but the benefits last a short time – there is no continuity, no follow up therefore we don’t get a permanent/life term solution. So that was certainly a challenge. Even though people recognized the need, they could not see the solution to be long term and sustainable. The second challenge was that the schools were already overwhelmed with lot of regulatory compliances – filling out the reports, sharing the information with government agencies etc. I always met with resistance from teachers and principals when I introduced this idea – they felt this is another thing getting added to their to-do list. So, the first response was that of the resistance. One thing that I learned here going through this experience is that – you should very clearly articulate the exact nature of problems your different groups of stakeholders can relate to. The principal is going to look at education and its objectives very differently than a teacher, parent, student and school board. I learned that these five different stakeholder groups had very different viewpoints about learning objectives, education etc. It was very difficult to come up with a mission statement or list of objectives that addresses everyone’s needs equally or adequately. So, these were some of the challenges that I faced in the beginning, which kind of slowed me down a little bit. However, I changed my path, and focused on my time on schools that were willing to give their time and resources. I was open for it to evolve organically. I didn’t have a fixated mindset, so I kept moving on and worked with people on areas they were willing to work with me to improve them.
Mohan: In the context of what I have been doing Jay, here is an example – before I came to India, and started launching my idea on different forums, I worked on creating lesson plans for a year. I had approximately 23 different lesson plans, with an average of about 2.5 hours per session, that covered all the topics I wanted to teach to address the gaps in the current education system. After developing these lesson plans, I thought it will be easy for me to just approach the schools and follow the lessons plan as guidebook and things will go well. However, at the school I chose to work with, I quickly realized that the children there came from a different cultural background. It was a very resource challenged school. Therefore, what I thought the children need was very different than what the children needed. So, I set my lesson plans aside, and spent lot of time understanding their real needs, so I could implement my solution in the appropriate context and therefore received well, so I changed my plans there a little bit. Originally, I thought of conducting a pilot for 3 to 4 months, but it took me 10 months to complete the pilot and I am glad I did that. So, through this pilot, I realized the children here have to have some pre-requisites before I introduce my solution. Initially I took it for granted that 7th grade children have abilities to read and write but that was not the case. There were many children that were promoted to next grade based on the policy of not retaining a child in the same grade. Second challenge was that not all children were consistent in attending schools because of the socio-economic challenges that they had in homes, poverty etc. Third challenge was lack of focus and concentration, again because of the background the children came from. So, a 4-month pilot ended up becoming a 10-month pilot. However, having gone through that experience gave us a very large superset of ideas and approaches that fits in different cultures and contexts – that is how I was able to offer the workshop to 7-year-old with the same effectiveness as an 18-year-old because even though the content is same, but delivery method and the way you share it with different age groups is different. That has been a great learning experience through the pilot. So that was an example of how I started thinking something and along the way I changed my plan and how it helped me positively.
Mohan: Thank you Stephanie for asking the question. Our belief has always been that something as priceless as giving the child the resources that unleash their inherent potential should never be charged at the first place. Good quality education should be accessible to every child as a basic human right. I remember distinctly the conversation that Aparna and I had two and half years ago where I had told Aparna that my vision is to do this for free, but Aparna in her own style convinced me not to do as a charity. Although the intention is noble, but anything that you offer as charity is not as appreciated or as well received compared to when you offer it with a price tag, even though it is a small, affordable amount. However, at the same time to honor the nobility of that intention, you could reach across different segments of society especially those who cannot afford it. So that advise from Aparna stuck with me, and I felt we can make it work in a way where it is not purely a commercial enterprise where the primary focus is making money, not addressing a social need and it is also not charity work where we don’t make any money. So, the middle path was to become a social entrepreneur where you address both – social and commercial aspects of the business.In the beginning, we didn’t have any plan how we were going to do it, but we were open to the idea, and we actually put it in black and white on all flyers and brochures that if there is a family or child that cannot afford to pay – please reach out to us and we will find a way to provide that financial assistance or offer it even for free for people who show promise and potential. So, we had few such cases in past summer workshops - There was a family that was struggling financially and they reached out saying they cannot pay in cash and if there are other ways if they can pay in kind by providing other services - That family helped us with logistics, video recording etc., so we didn’t charge their two high schoolers for the workshop. That’s one example. Second example is we made a bold claim that if people don’t find value from the workshop, they don’t pay. So, people didn’t have anything to lose and they were more open to exploring and experiencing WAVE framework. Third example is that we offered the workshop stating that even if you pay in the beginning, and after the workshop if you feel that it was not worth it – say it once and will be refund the fees with no questions asked. These were some of the things we did to alleviate people from their financial burdens and make it affordable/possible for them to benefit from the workshops. Going forward we plan to work with School districts. The Mayor of Frisco, TX came in as a guest of honor for our graduation ceremony, and he was very impressed with the demonstration that students did in our workshop. So, he has committed to take it to school districts in Frisco and neighboring areas – we would find a different financial model there such that it becomes affordable to a wider audience such that affordability should not be a reason for it to not reach certain sections of society.
Mohan: We had children with proven learning disabilities – there were parents who were extremely concerned about their children with ADHD. Also, there were few students that were going through treatment for early stage, minor neural disorders. But the parents believed that in spite of medical issues their child is diagnosed with, inherently the child shows potential and interest and does well in many areas of school work and social life. In Atlanta, we had a 11-year-old boy that was labelled as a child with learning disabilities or a slow learner but the parents came with lot of hope that a different way of learning might suite him rather than same kind of conventional learning that he is exposed to. He did well during the 5 days of the workshop. Parents were not sure if he will stay interested until the end of workshop. I felt all along that every child has an inherent potential. If we introduce learning methods that naturally aligns with the way they want to learn that might help us see the difference. That is what happened with this child. Although I would admit if I have 40 students in my class and there are one or two students who show slow learning than others, I had to take some extra time, and effort to reach out to those students. However, here is what works wonder, what brings magical outcome is that I never gave up on any child – I show faith and patience and that gives the child and parents hope that if we change the learning method and environment, child’s potential gets an outlet to shine.