London to Waifad Village: This Man Left His Fancy Job To Teach English To Rural Students

Shuvajit- London to Waifad Village: This Man Left His Fancy Job To Teach English To Rural Students:

Shuvajit was an introverted child from a Kolkata family with limited resources, who made it to a degree in Economics from Presidency College, a master’s degree in finance and marketing from IIM Lucknow, a job with IBM based in London, and then to a confident role model as a teacher working to bring out the voices of underprivileged rural children and young adults.

Shuvajit’s first teaching efforts were as a voluntary teacher in the small, marginalized rural community of Sawad, Washim district, India – an area much affected by farmer suicide. Today, a decade later, he is the Head of Education at Barefoot College, responsible for the curriculum and operations of 50 informal community schools that bring holistic primary education to 3,000+ children from the remotest of rural communities in India. Shuvajit is also a direct teacher of a classroom in Shikshaniketan, a 400-student school based in the village of Tilonia, Rajasthan, and is responsible for designing and delivering a unique curriculum of citizenship and education for sustainable development.

The communities Shuvajit serves are severely marginalised and economically underprivileged (earning less than $1 a day). These circumstances have led to a generation of individuals that have internalised exploitation and dominance by higher castes and that are silent towards their own rights. Child marriage and domestic violence abound. Shuvajit believes these patterns are a direct result of the fact that education often excludes studying citizenship and civic responsibility. His approach to teaching encourages children to be responsible actors who contribute to creating a more sustainable world – one that offers quality education, gender equality, climate protection, clean water, sanitation, good health and wellbeing. His curriculum is specially customised to include supportive low-cost digital content, which means it can be replicated for community schools held at night (for children who work in the day) in remote rural areas. These schools make use of a solar-powered Edu-Box that includes a projector, an offline content repository and tablets for student use.

Shuvajit’s journey through education in rural India has been well documented in English national daily papers such as The Hindu, DNA, and The New Indian Express. If awarded the Global Teacher Prize, he would use 15 per cent of the prize funds for the training and improvement of his local teaching community. 40% of the funds would be used for a one-time capital expenditure towards transforming the bare-minimum facilities of his schools into creative and productive spaces for residential learning and research. The balance would fund a five-year operational plan to open the schools to global participation.

Shuvajit Payne had a prestigious IIM degree, a well-paying job in London and a luxurious life, when he decided to quit all this and live in a village to teach English to the villagers.

Making a big shift in the career is never easy, especially when you are leaving a well paying job and leaving it without planning the next step.

“It was an extremely difficult decision. My family and friends just didn’t see the point behind my shift as I had no plan and no experience in the development sector. But I knew that I will travel around and find something that gives me happiness,” Payne says.

So, what is it that drives change and makes someone take such a huge step in life? Especially when the cost of living is reaching sky high, and you have to make sure that you are taking the right plunge.

There are those who plan their life and follow a path, and then there are those who just jump into the flow and see where their passion takes them. Payne belongs to the latter. He didn’t know if he wanted to associate himself with the development sector, he didn’t even know much about it, but he was certain of one thing – that he wanted to do something meaningful with the life.

“After spending four years in the corporate sector, I was unsatisfied both at a personal and professional level and I knew I could’t live like this forever,” Payne says.

“When I resigned from my job I didn’t know about the SBI fellowship. I just wanted to travel, do photography, take ownership of something that could bring a change and associate myself with something for social good,” Payne says.

 

His friend introduced him to the fellowship and as he read about it Payne was sure that this is what he wanted to do. The fellowship gave him all the things that he was looking for; grassroot exposure, ownership, an opportunity to explore new avenues and satisfaction from work.

For the fellowship, Payne was based out of Waifad Village of Wardha District, Maharashtra. Through support from an NGO, a photography project on the aftermath of farmers’ suicides, and through interactions with the villagers, Payne continuously dug deeper into the realities around him and tried to find an opportunity to contribute substantially to the people he was with.

He got to know about spoken English classes in the village. He was surprised to see that villagers were paying around Rs.5,000 to Rs.6,000 to learn English. “The problem was, the teachers there themselves didn’t know proper English and those classes weren’t helping the students at all. So I took up the initiative and started teaching them spoken English,” he says.

Payne was associated with Education and Communication activities of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation – an NGO in Vidarbha region in Maharashtra. The region had witnessed over 20,000 farmer suicides over the last decade and was characterized by extreme poverty.

Payne simply wanted to help, but as he didn’t have much knowledge about the agriculture sector he thought to utilize his skills in the Education sector.

His main focus was to make the people eligible for jobs that could result in an alternate income source for them apart from farming. Another income source would eventually keep the daily bread and butter going and would probably stop people from taking extreme steps out of poverty.

He gathered students of standard 8 and above and started teaching them functional English. He used various interesting techniques to keep their interest alive and help them learn quickly as there wasn’t enough time. He organized classes thrice a day throughout the week.

“I would teach them English by making them listen to the catchy English songs that were easier to follow. I would also ask them to watch their favourite TV serial and explain the plot in English the next day,” Payne says.

The project aimed at utilizing the existing infrastructure to expose the village youth to English language and new career options with the online resources available.

Payne organized mock interviews to prepare the youth for various job interviews. He also made his computer accessible to the students so that they could learn and use it whenever they needed to. By the end of the fellowship, Payne had managed to make 30-40 students confidently speak broken English. Here’s a video he shot of his students before he left the village.

“The biggest challenge was to integrate in the village atmosphere initially as I had never experienced or been to a village,” Payne says.

Another challenge was to communicate with the locals as he wasn’t familiar with their regional language. But gradually this gap was filled, mostly because of the accommodating nature of the village communities. Payne says,“Once you win their trust, they do the best to accommodate you – in their customs and special occasions, and speak to you about their aspirations, especially the youth. Once that connection with people has happened, all other challenges – poor connectivity, extremely hot climate, lack of infrastructure, disappears. You become a link between their existing world and a world new to them.”

After the fellowship, Payne worked with Reliance Foundation for two years and later on became Programme Manager at SBI Youth For India Fellowship hoping to take his life-changing experience to others like him.

“I would advice to just take the step. There is no downside as a career in this sector. You will always find your way. And, in case you don’t find it right, you always have an option to go back to what you were doing before,” Payne says.

Now happily settled into the development sector, Payne’s journey from a fellow to the programme manager has been fascinating, impressive and eventful. He found his way by going against the flow and following his heart and passion, and it was all worth it!