Meet Gowri Sudha

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Sed ut perspiciatis unde.

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Gowri Sudha. Gowri was introduced to us by the brilliant and talented Sunny Moza.

Hi Gowri, we’re so thrilled to have you sharing your story with us today. Maybe we can kick things off by having you introduce yourself to our readers? We’d love to have you go into your story and how you got to where you are today.
We hear a lot of stories about how farmers feel helpless and are burdened with crushing debt without a way in sight. As part of a family with a long history in farming, I have always believed farmers are very important for the planet and play a vital role in society. I was moved by the many stories of the farmers’ struggles that I saw in the news and heard from friends and family..

When discussing with locals, I was surprised at their lack of knowledge on fundamentals like crop storage, understanding the impact of high interest rates, soil fertility etc. I realized that even a little education on the fundamentals of math and science could help them in many ways. Upon further deliberation, I felt for long term change, we should focus on the children and empower them with the knowledge needed to become effective farmers. They in turn could educate their parents, and apply business and science concepts to implement changes that would result in a more successful and profitable business..

Coming to the United States, I was exposed to the teaching techniques here and saw examples where theoretical learning had practical applications. I realized the power of hands-on learning. The emphasis on learning concepts and their practical applications makes learning fun and excites the imagination.

I set out to find the benefits of experiential learning and realized I was not only able to understand better but I was able to retain the concepts longer. This was the beginning of our innovative Janyaa Lab In a Box (JLIB)! When Janyaa started in 2009, we focused on secondary education with students in the 6-10th grades. We started designing experiments for curriculum based concepts with “relevance to daily life” using Design Thinking principles. For example, Ratio is taught with different types of flowers in a garland.

Now comes the most distinct and integral part of our program – the application of Science and Math concepts to daily life. I always believed that this is important and it puts a child’s education to good use. So we developed a unique model that encourages students to apply the skills and concepts they have learned through Janyaa Lab in a Box into their daily life.

Every year we conduct the Janyaa Social Innovation Challenge (JSIC), where we ask students to apply the concepts they have learned and utilize their enhanced creative skills. We encourage children to think about the societal problems they witness daily and to create solutions & models that could solve them.

Winning entries are implemented in the respective schools through Janyaa Chidren2Community Solutions (JCCS) initiative with support from corporate sponsors. We can see how the students are more confident and empowered when they experience how their solutions are benefiting their schools. They start believing they can solve any problem that comes their way. That is a proud moment for schools and parents as they see the impact their children are making with Janyaa’s support. And it is also a great satisfactory moment for me and Janyaa.

We have worked with around 920 schools and 500,000 students so far. We trained around 14,000 teachers. Our goal is to impact at least a million children by 2025. Our success is what motivates us to go above and beyond to work with children.

We’ve heard great things about your organization. For our readers who might not be as familiar, can you please tell them about the organization?
Janyaa, a 80G organization set up in 2010, focuses on developing creative problem solving skills in rural kids in India. Kids educated from the principles of Janyaa are empowered to make progressive changes to their immediate communities and can help advance socio-economic state of their country. 1. Janyaa is founded on a key finding ,We retain 5% of a lecture, 50% of what we see and hear, 80% of what we experience”. 2. Hands-on learning of the concepts & teaching how the concepts are important in real life makes learning fun and excites the imagination. 3. A child understands the concepts better, and also able to retain them longer. Janyaa’s impact and what sets us apart is the results. We are happy to share results of couple of studies conducted on our program. A study conducted by International School of Business (ISB) Hyderabad in 2015 on students showed that Janyaa students perform 50% better than non-Janyaa students, 94% of the students like teachers showing the experiments and 92% want to practice with these experiments. A study conducted by ASER (Annual Status of Education Report), Delhi , in 2016 showed 52% improvement in the performance of students from baseline to final tests.

So, as we mentioned to our audience earlier, you were introduced to us by Sunny Moza and we really admire them and what they’ve built. For folks who might not be as familiar, can you tell them a bit about your experience with Sunny.
Sunny is extremely Versatile and multifaceted !!! I have been hearing Sunny hosting radio shows for a few years now, and attended some of the live events where he was emceeing. Very recently I have attended his workshop on Public speaking. His extraordinary talent in all that he does is mind boggling.

We contacted Sunny a few years a ago for emceeing our annual fundraising event for our organization Janyaa. Our association with him has been strong ever since. Our experience with him has been nothing but amazing. He has always been punctual, and communicated any requirement that is need needed to make the event successful in a prompt manner. Sunny was involved and had a clear understanding about the goals of the organization, events schedule, the purpose of the event which helps him handle the flow of the event and transitions seamlessly. Most importantly he interacts with the audience, keeps them engaged and makes the event enjoyable with his sense of humor. With him being genuinely passionate, we have always been able to exceed our goal for fundraising without fail for the past few years. Each and every guest and the board members who attend the gala enjoy Sunny’s hosting, positive energy, his humor and that’s the reason he is just a part of our event every single year for the past few years and will continue to do so.