Designing for Change in Education - A Conversation with Kiran Bir Sethi

Welcome to the Future Learning Design Podcast.

We have seen a timetable as a piece of paper rather than an artifact of conscience. For me, that's the fun of it. That's where it all comes together. All your intention, like you said, in the world will not change, right? So your intention of values, whatever you set out to do as a school, that value proposition finally has to become actionable processes that you will then timetable for.

Hello again and welcome back.

Thanks for joining me again for another episode of the Future Learning Design Podcast with me, Tim Logan. This week, my conversation is with the wonderful Kiran Birsetty, a designer who became a teacher, a principal who grew into an education reformer, and subsequently morphed into a social entrepreneur. As a trained graphic designer, Kiran comfortably uses the language of design to develop not only curriculum innovation, but also community-based social programs. Kiran founded the award-winning Riverside School in Ahmedabad, India in 2001. Riverside is viewed as a lab to prototype design processes that use a systems approach to build a culture of empowerment, graduating young citizens with an "I can" mindset using their agency for the greater good. Riverside Learning Center, which started in 2016, has codified the practices and processes of the Riverside School and designed training programs to empower more schools to become user-centered. Kiran is also the founder of Approach, an initiative to make our cities more child-friendly, for which she was awarded the Ashoka Fellow in 2008. In 2009, Kiran launched Design for Change, which uses a simple 4-step design framework to cultivate the "I can" mindset in all children. Today, Design for Change is the largest movement of change of and by children and is in more than 60 countries, impacting over 2.2 million children and 65,000 teachers. Kiran is a judge for the prestigious Yidan Prize and a visiting Global Fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In 2019, she was awarded the Earth Prize in Luino, Italy, and Design for Change has been recognized as one of the 100 most innovative educational programs in the world by 100.org in 2017, '18, '19, and 2020.

Hey Tim.

Hey Karen, how are you?

Good, good, good.

How are you? Brilliant. Thank you so much. It's just a real pleasure to have you with me on the podcast. So thank you for joining me.

And thank you so much.

I've been fascinated by your work for a while now, and I'd just love to hear a little bit more firstly about your background, because you know, you've come into education, but actually you didn't start out as an educator, right? You started out as a designer. And I just, yeah, I'd love to hear a little bit more about your story there in terms of how you then began to apply some of those learnings and lessons from design into education?

First of all, thank you, Tim, for inviting me. You know, I'm often asked this question and I frame it by saying that when we design, it's intentional, right? And there's an act of intentionality in what we do. And interestingly though, my foray into education was not intentional at all. It was really by chance. And it happened really because when I became a mother and my son went to school for the first time, I think very early I realized just how bleak an education system is and, you know, about how so much of the work with young children is about complicity. I mean, keep quiet, stay quiet, and then you're a good kid, and everything works from that. And they learn that idea of choreographing their responses to stay out of trouble so quickly, right? Everything is about, can I do the right thing? Can I keep quiet? Can I be out of trouble? And then pretty much is done. And very often, if you continue to do that every single day for 15 years, well, that's your mindset. Let me stay out of trouble. Yeah. You know, because we look at children as problems to solve and not problem solvers, right? We don't really look at them with that lens. And we often diminish their whole being by either age, you're too young, not now, when you're older, or gender. In many parts of the world, that becomes a lens by which opportunities, uh, are opened up. And demographics, you know, the idea where you're born will determine where you go. So I believe when I saw that with my son, I think I also reacted to what I was feeling. I don't think children know what's going on. You see, that's the incredible injustice of it all, right? They just don't know. And if you ask them if they happen to have had a good sports day, they would have think education is fine, school is fine, this is how it's supposed to be.

Exactly.

And so much of us as parents in hindsight, we say, but we turned out fine, what's the problem? And we rationalize a system by virtue of excusing its injustices by saying, but Some of us turned out fine, so it can't be so bad. So I believe as a mother, my reaction was really more to what he was going through and seeing him not have a voice, not have a story, not have anything. More so my response to him, I kind of found myself reacting. Who else do you react with when you see the stupidity of a program? You kind of say, but didn't you ask? Or didn't you say? And I saw him recoil and I said, shit, this is just not happening. I can't be spending 20 years ruining my relationship with my son because I don't have a voice with the school. So I just, as a designer, I responded, I said, boss, this is not happening. So I took him out of school because I saw a couple of things that just didn't work. And then without even looking at the usual options would have been, let me change the school. I mean, or let me stay in the same school and crib for life. And I believe my design education provided me the what-if, isn't there, you know, why not? And I think coming from the land of Mahatma Gandhi, and my school is diagonally opposite the ashram where he started his whole march to freedom. I think he had this to say, he said, you are the choice you've been looking for. Nobody else is going to come and change your world, right? And the fact that that choice was finally within me, and I was not setting out to change the world, or change education, my son's life, can I make that better? And I definitely had the skill sets for that. I felt totally competent in that area. You know, so had I brought in the worry of saying, oh my God, education, but I'm not from education and put that weight on me, I probably would not have done very much. So I really, really, I'm such an advocate for design thinking because it gives you power, it gives you choice, it gives you possibility. So I took him out and I said, okay, I'm starting it at my home. And that's really how it happened. And then the joy of listening, I cannot tell you how marvelous that was. The joy of walking with that child of 6 years and saying, tell me how it works, you know, and show me what you're looking at and be my partner in this story. So that really then became Riverside's template, you know, and framework and process. So over the years, of course, it's built into that very, very clear and unrelenting understanding that we will co-create a journey, we will not design for you, We will design with you. And so that then created the processes and the programs and the timetabling or whatever that emerged from that. And alongside, of course, codification. I was very clear that what we're learning cannot stay at Riverside alone. That was not the reason we were doing this. So because we started codifying, we were able to tell the story beyond Riverside. When people would come, I have to tell you, in the first 3 years, people came and said, what's happening here? Something is right.. And we couldn't quite put our fingers onto what was right, but the voice and presence of a child was so obvious. I think that's what people felt. And I think that's really how it grew. And we took it a year at a time, we were in no hurry. And I would really recommend if you're starting a school, take time, make time your ally. So we took it a year at a time, we were in no hurry, and therefore we could really plant the seeds of culture really strong and nurture it.

Amazing. Yeah, it's so interesting what you were saying about the weight of the pressure. If you look too broadly at this kind of systemic issue, but actually if you just start with the joy of one child, like your own child, or a few as you grow, it's brilliant. And then that's really contagious because people respond to that, right? That's something really tangible that you can just emotionally respond to rather than this whole systemic kind of problem, if you like.

Brilliant.

And then following on from that, at what point did you start that kind of codifying process? Because I really liked your feel, imagine, do, share design thinking framework that you use. When did you kind of know that that was something you wanted to more formally make part of the learning process?

Well, actually it just happened that when I started, we were, I was naturally using the design thinking process, right? From education, the idea of a user-centered voice, the idea of empathy, the idea of iteration and all of that. It was in 2009 actually when I launched and conceptualized Design for Change. When I said, how do you demystify the language of design and make it accessible by a child? That was really the point, right? Because the language had to be so easy to understand, and because I was designing it for an Indian context, I had to be responsive of the fact that the diversity of our Indian, right, from a little village school or from different languages, etc. So I had to translate very easily into multiple languages. It had to be so light so that you could DIY it, you know, literally. So the design of the FIDS was really a response to demystifying the language, making it simple. Then the framework was then made into a simple toolkit, which then was the first year we launched, and that was in India. And I think that's really then give us the confidence that design thinking fundamentally, and this framework for agency, The student agency that is catalyzed by empathy that was providing us such fantastic stories. I think we got emboldened, but then, then the TED Talk happened actually in 2009 itself. And I was super lucky to have that platform to share, because I have to say the TED audience is not the education audience. No. Had it been in just education, I doubt it would've gone. That's another thing that I have an issue with. We are so caught up with if it's from another school, oh, we don't want it. We're so caught up with closing doors rather than opening it. And I think with the TED audience, there were people who were not in education, there were entrepreneurs, and there were designers and artists. So I think the next year when people start reaching out to me from different countries, I said, oh my God, what's happening? And that's how Design for Change went global. And the same design thinking framework, which was something that we iterated at Riverside and then created into a simple framework that could go global. It's today in 60 countries.

Yeah, amazing. And that TED Talk is such a powerful description, not just educationally, but socially as well, right? Because you're a social entrepreneur and you're actually taking all those design tools, but actually enabling the children themselves to get out there onto the streets and start interviewing people and just really engaging with real-life problems that they suddenly find so much joy in trying to solve. For me, that was the power of it. It wasn't the educational aspect as such.

Absolutely. In fact, if you ask me, I think it's a way of life. It's so much more than just education. I've seen, I apply it for my own, you know, when I'm in a moment of crisis, or if I'm in a moment of conflict, or if I'm in a moment of anxiety or pressure, or a moment of joy, I just find that I use so naturally. I start with a lens of empathy, the user, the person, you know, it's always starting with that. Because I have such confidence in the fidelity that if I follow and if I have the fidelity to the process, the solution will, whatever emerges, will enhance the experience. But it's the fidelity that must not be compromised because we as people love doing, we love action. We don't want to pause, we don't understand, we don't want to imagine. So we love action. So it gives us a sense of agency, not knowing that we're often solving the wrong problems. And then comes the mindset that says, see, nothing changes. What can one person do? But if you just start with pausing and understanding rather than jumping to assumptions and conclusions, I find that that has a real, real way of solving with empathy.

We rush to solutions, don't we? I mean, very quickly, we rush to solutions and haven't actually fully understood the problem, or as you say, even understood whether it's the right problem that we're thinking about. And that's the other aspect of it, which leads me on to the next question around social innovation. I've been playing with this idea of education, trying to reframe the idea of education as social innovation in contrast to social reproduction. Historically, we've thought of education as just reproducing the norms and the knowledge of the previous generation into the next one and keep reproducing. But actually there's an innovative kind of energy in young people themselves. They want to know and understand. And as you say, act, but also we do have multiple challenges that we're facing right now, whether it's with pandemic right now or the climate emergency and all the, all of these things. And actually my feeling is we can't afford to be detached and abstract anymore. It has to make real change in the world. And that's the other thing I really like is your I Can idea of I Can and We Can, and that, Again, that's such a simple but such a powerful empowering idea. But maybe perhaps if people haven't seen the TED Talk, perhaps you could just speak a little bit about that and then how you— that became a bit of a contagion across India and the world.

Well, yeah, correct. I'm a fan of simplicity. I don't think the self-congratulatory framework is of use to anybody, right? Only to yourself. Within that simplicity, though, there's deep maturity. There's a maturity of belief system. For me, that is the most empowering thing. I think what— where so far education is focused on skills, and not on beliefs. So you might have the 21st century skill of communication, but if your belief system is still about the 20th century, or because, oh, certain girls and boys should have different differences, or certain demographic can do something, there has to be an alignment between an empowering belief and an empowering skill. Only then there is positive change for the greater good. So I think that so much of our education, of course, across the world and in India, we don't start with the belief system, we don't start with the individual. To say, you have that agency. And like I said, I mean, maybe not in the TED Talk, but in so many other talks, I keep saying, in the first 2 years of a child's life on the planet, they talk about agency. They go from crawling to sitting to standing, laughing, talking in the first 2 years, telling us, "I can." And then we send them to school and say, "You can't," for 15 years. How the hell are we going to be able to change and pivot and change the needle, right? So for me, that was a starting point. And I was super, I think, lucky to have that belief system fostered in me when I was a child. And I had, you know, parents that believed, not necessarily a school system. But I keep telling parents that you have such a powerful role to play. Don't think the school is going to be the be-all and end-all of education. So much of it is happening outside of that bastion. And then I had the opportunity to go to my design college. It just got further reinforced about what you feel and believe within yourself. I mean, that's why I could start a school. Can you imagine? I mean, that somewhere, that craziness, or the fact that I was not weighed down by the rules, I had no idea what rules I was breaking. I just said, boss, I'm setting this up, you know. So I think that belief system is what we are putting first into our children, and imparting belief that I am first part of a human race, not just of an identity of a country. Can I expand that understanding of my belief of who I am? My identity. I'm a part of the human race, because then everybody is my story. Here we whittle it down to say your religion, your language, your culture, your gender. It's not going to work, right? So I think if we can provide children opportunities to engage with the world at that level, but then also realize that there is a story that you have your influence and impact on, right, within your own setup, but that belief is the same. Whether it is for your world or for the world, both have to then eventually grow into, because if you keep giving us, give me the belief over 15 years of my world, that I can make a positive impact in my world. Then when I graduate, whenever that is, it becomes a natural default mindset that the world is something that I have either influence or, or with. Yeah.

That's interesting. I completely agree with you about the belief, but I also see sometimes We try to instill that belief in young people without actually giving them the opportunity to learn, to exercise it, to exercise it and deepen that belief by actually doing those things. Because I think, you know, we can create student councils or we can kind of create this slightly artificial sense of I can, that I have an influence, but actually if we don't allow them and have some trust to kind of put them out into the world and say, these are the real thorny problems that we're facing. 'Let's talk about them. How, what, what can you find out about them? How, how might you influence this?' And I think that deepens that belief. So it's that it goes then from just being a belief to being something that they really kind of embody themselves.

No, then it becomes a mindset, right? It starts with the belief and then becomes a mindset. And you're absolutely right. I think most education always has this perception or this idea of no time. Oh, I have no time for that. You know, I have to do all of this and this this either-or model starts coming into education rather than the both-and, right? So I find that somewhere we lose trust in ourselves to be able to believe in our children. It also starts with— I keep saying why that— that's why I say contagion, right? Whatever I have, I'm naturally going to sort of have you absorb from me. But if I don't have that belief, if I think that children are young, if I actually genuinely believe that gender matters, then there's no chance in the world any intellectual conversation is going to shift that. So I feel that that's that act of role modeling, to be the person that is worthy of being mimicked, is something we don't emphasize enough. We get our education and a PhD in chemistry, but we don't get it in humanity. There's such a big shift in that. And so we walk into the class teaching the subject, but not reaching the child. That's not my problem. That's somebody else's problem. That's the special needs problem, or that's the counselor's problem. So I think somewhere we need to believe that within ourselves, this unrelenting commitment to that belief in a child, and that you're, you're part of that story, and you can have a solid influence. I mean, you're anyway making a mark, right? I mean, the fact that you're in front of your— you might as well make it for the good.

No, definitely. Perhaps could you, just to kind of get practical for a second, could you just give a couple of examples of the types of things that, you know, you've been empowering the young people at Riverside to do? I mean, obviously in the TED Talk you talk about them, but that was You know, that was also more than 10 years ago now, and I'm sure you've done some phenomenal projects there since then. Perhaps you could just give a couple of kind of tasters of the types of things that you're—

Oh, a lot. I mean, it's not even an option. I mean, every grade, everybody has to do it. I mean, it's just by the nature of the design of the program that what we call client projects are part and parcel of the expectation. So, I mean, I'll give you a small example of my 6-year-old. I mean, all our 6-year-olds once, you've basically understood the skills of communication and language. How do you apply it? How do you apply it for the real good? So every year, invariably, we offer them an opportunity to go to the municipal corporation, and the municipality gives them a project. So the last one actually was with the reptile— the zoo had a new reptile center that opened up, and the children kind of went there, and they realized there was no guide in the reptile center. So they were not given the information that they needed. So the Nuspaali doesn't necessarily say do this, the children go and find where they think that gap is and then design a solution for it. So they designed audio tour for the reptile zoo, saying that if nobody comes, I mean, you can take it in Hindi, you can take it in this thing. These are 6-year-olds. So not only through that, they did all their writing, their script writing, their iteration, going into the studio, making sure they understood the details of the reptiles, talking to the cleaner, at the zoo to say who sleeps when, which python sleeps at which point, tell a deeper story. Then they realized when they did the first time, they were getting too fast. So all of that, everything that we do as designers, we understand the issue, we brainstorm for a solution, we iterate and do a quick prototype, we refine it, and then finally, they launched it, and it was big fanfare, and they've got this stuff on in the newspapers, etc. So that feeling of accomplishment, It's part of that whole belief system, and it starts as young as there. And if you take the other end of the spectrum, you have my grade 10. Every year they have a business challenge, and the business challenge is again with industry. And we've been having a fantastic partnership with the best ice cream manufacturer and industry, I would say, in India. And every year he gives the kids a challenge, which is called the Christmas Challenge, to innovate an entirely new Christmas ice cream, to have a marketing, everything from scratch.. So from there, they do the survey, they understand what the flavors are, they do the entire profiling, they go to the manufacturing department, understand the manufacturing process, they create the ice cream, all of that along with the marketing, then they have to go to the ice cream parlors and actually sell it. You know, so all of that, they complete the entire circle. Another thing that I will keep saying that we don't let children complete the loop. Halfway we say, okay, now that's enough. Okay, you can't go back there again. I mean, we don't have the time. So for our children to complete the loop is that accomplishment. Otherwise, it's very easy to say, okay, this much is good, I'll call up the main person, I will go there. But here the kids have to wait, and they keep saying, nobody's picking up the phone, boss, you have to wait. They didn't like the street play. Well, they're not all going to love you. So it's not the real world is separate from school, right? It's that blurring that boundary between school and life, that has children confident of the skill sets they need when they graduate.

That's brilliant. But I also really like that, that a lot of the learning is in those, as you say, the waiting around or the frustration of the process. And because I think we sometimes, again, we kind of try to make it quite clinical and we, as adults, we separate this section.

No, we insulate children. We insulate children from rejection. And then we think, oh, poor things, they can't take it. No, they can. Because you're anyway going to be their safety net. You're not necessarily going to let them fall, but they must do the heavy lifting. They must do the trapeze acts knowing that there will be a safety net, but you can't do it for them. And that's what I find often the conundrum or the gap between where schools don't allow children— either it's total kid gloves, or it's a completely, you know, bleak teach-to-the-test system. So it's kind of both ends of the spectrum, and somewhere like In between lies this beautiful balance of the deep rigor and mastery along with agency and wellbeing.

Yeah, absolutely. And that leads really nicely actually then on to, 'cause you mentioned it once already, your either/or. And again, similarly, I've been thinking about this a lot. I think we, in so many areas, we conceptualize the options as either this or that.

Yeah, sure.

And it becomes very separated and very, again, slightly artificial. But what we're often looking for is not kind of mediocre compromise, but an integrated balance, maybe as you're saying.

A symbiotic relationship. Yeah.

Yeah. So, you know, I know you speak about this a lot and it's quite a big theme for you. I just wanted to ask you how that has become or informed, you know, the way that you think and work maybe as a team or the way that you develop your strategy to go forward, because it putting that into practice. You know, it's great to say it. It's a great kind of strapline of finding the and, but what does that actually mean in practice when you start working?

I'm glad you asked that. And I think somewhere we have seen a timetable as a piece of paper rather than an artifact of conscience. For me, that's the fun of it. That's where it all comes together. All your intention, like you said, in the world will not change the needle, right? So your intention of values, whatever you set out to do as a school, you might have a certain value proposition for existing. But that value proposition finally has to become actionable processes that you will then timetable for. That's what we've done the heavy lifting in 20 years. So if you've been to our website, I keep saying we're human by chance, but we can become humane by design, right, or by choice. And that E of the humane were our values. We said empathy, ethics, excellence, elevation, and evolution. We believe these are the choices we make that on a daily basis, can we be nudged to be more empathetic? Can we understand that we take choices that are more right than easy? So all of these, are they great to say? How do they actually get action? That's what we've done. So we use the design thinking process to distill each value into an actionable process. So for example, if I say ethics are really important, how does it happen every single day? Well, we have a morning meeting called the Konglom. It's been designed specifically to timetable for relationships, right? So it's a time in the day, every single day, single day that is set aside just to slow down, start with the heart, and then take the day. Second is the agenda setting, closing the loop, which is about ethics, choices. So every day at the end of the conglom, we have a time where the children and the team gets together and say, what's the day going to look like? And of course, with the younger children, they have a lot more agency over that, because with the oldest, there is a certain expectation of a certain exit exam, because we're responsible for that as well. Right? So the kids decide, ah, we want to do this first because we think this. One group might say that, one group might say this, as long as there's an ethical responsibility that we will complete all of these tasks with quality. So that's your second process. Then comes what is called the surplus. Beautiful little process of simple acts of kindness. Keep the bathroom clean, make sure you help the support team to clean up. These little acts where we have these wonderful surplus curriculum that has little cards So each team can pick up a card and it'll be said, bathroom duty, or, you know, the thing. So it starts, of course, I'm talking about the youngest because very often we think the younger ones just need to sing songs and have nursery rhymes the whole day. But it starts right there. After that, it's a process called Bode Protocol. The idea that in a session, in every teaching moment, there should always start with relevance, rigor, and relationship, what we call the 3 Rs. So it's timetable is created as a process. And then we have a lovely process called closing the loop. So at the end of the day, there's a reflective moment. So when you look at these little seeds that you plant, every one of them has a value proposition, right? So on a daily basis, if you do nothing else over the, over the year, if every single day the classroom culture is built on humanity, then everything else is a beautiful thing. Then of course, we've reimagined the sports day. We've reimagined the performance. We've reimagined all of these with the same framework though. We have a value, we take it through the design thinking process, create a process which is co-created by children, and then timetable for it. But we've created this as a systems. The pillars of a school are parents, teachers, community, students, administrative staff, right? So every pillar houses these processes, and then your timetable is that artifact of conscience. Have you timetabled for a systems approaches? Are all of the stakeholders believing the same problem? I can have a kick-ass thing happening in the classroom, but my parents have no belief system, or I can't, you know, right? How does everybody sign in onto the promise? So 20 years my friend has gone into figuring this out, codifying it, putting it into the platform. And now if you start a school, I can help you.

There you go. That's amazing. And I really like, because often the timetable, and it's funny you mentioned it, you know, often the timetable is this restrictive straitjacket. There's the thing that you can't actually adapt and move and change and respond. But on the flip side, no timetable, no structure is not an option either. You know, that's too much fluidity. So it's that idea, and we mentioned it before we started recording, the idea of a both/and, but also a kind of an enabling structure, enough of a structure to provide orientation and space and predictability to some extent, but within that, a space for fluidity and adaptability. To respond. And I think that's a really, really lovely way of doing it. Amazing. Thank you. And then a couple of other questions I'd love to ask. I saw you've done some work with the GOOD Project from the Harvard Graduate School of Education, just because I think this is another part of what I see as a bit of a challenge sometimes, is that we have some amazing educational entrepreneurs out there doing really, really interesting and progressive things, but actually we don't always have the evidence base to say, this is how it impacted on these children. And this is how we know that this is working. And then we, you know, often get pulled back into the other research, which is cognitive science, et cetera, which is kind of supporting the more traditional model of academic knowledge-based education. So I would just love to hear a little bit, if you could share about some of that impact research, because I think that's a crucial part of proving the concept.

I, again, I'm kind of pulling from what you said about great work is happening, but I might just tell you, oh, I think it's great. Where is the research that supports this? See, you can do your great work and have impact within your own space, and nobody's going to question you, right? But if you want to have an influence in the larger picture, then it's your responsibility to validate what you're saying with research that is credible, not just I've done my research with 5 people, and I think, you know, how all the toothpaste companies do it. 5 people said it is fantastic because 4 people did the research. So it was non-negotiable. If I had to go out and tell the world, and because the world is naturally skeptical and cynical, how do I provide enough evidence that this is not just something I am saying because I've done it? And I think that really was the way we went. And we really went to the best. Of course, Dr. Howard Gardner is a dear, dear friend of mine. And over the years we've built such a fantastic friendship, but we were very clear that we wanted to get it from the best. So it was a wonderful friend of mine who actually sponsored that research for us because it It's costly. And that's another thing that comes sometimes in the way of research, right? Not only does the price point, whatever, but if you really want to back your claim up to say, this is not just something I am saying, but there is this data and this evidence to prove it, then you have to put in that effort to get that done. Yeah.

Brilliant. And could you give maybe just a little bit of a taste of what that found in terms of the substance of the research?

Well, that the FIDS has evidence to prove that empathy actually grows when you do design a solution from the user's point of view. Empathy the thing, problem-solving skills and creativity just shot up. And the other thing that we did, we did one with, of course, with the Good Project, we also did another one with EdelGive, that was more India-centric. It was really interesting, because we did that other research with government school, or what we call the public schools there. That week that the children designed for change, attendance went up. Okay, so they were attending school a lot more, their ability to build relationship with the teacher went up, they learned transferable skills, that means what they learned through the Design for Change or the FITS framework, they were able to apply in other aspects of their life as well. So that was fantastic finding as well.

Yeah, no, that's great. And then lastly, just in terms of, cuz as I said, it's been 12 years since the TED Talk and a lot will have grown and changed, I'm sure since then, but what are your kind of future plans for Riverside Learning Center or for Design for Change and just trying to, to grow that scale that after you've done all this amazing codifying?

I keep saying I just want to take a spa treatment right now and take a year off.

I'm sure, I'm sure you do. You've been busy.

I think for Design for Change, the beauty is it's in its 12th year now, and I think it's got a certain momentum. And for us as a team now with Design for Change, it's really about expanding that reach so that every child has access to fit. So there is a duality in the way we work in Design4Change. There is the global team, that whole mission is to spread the story wide, and then there are country partners who take it deep. So we're able to do both. So that's really, I'm hoping that we just continue to, if we have 60 countries now, there are 200-odd countries that we have a way to go. So that's anyway a story by itself. The similar thing with Riverside Learning Center is now that we have the entire program that in a manner that we can now take beyond, we've started working on that as well. So, and of course, unlike Design4Change, which is a lighter, leaner touchpoint, this as a school has— needs a hell of a lot more immersion and time. So we want to work slowly on that, we want to test it, we want to see whether the way we've codified the processes is universally acceptable. So that's the greater— so we've got the functionality in multiple languages, We've been testing the processes across different countries, and what we're super kind of gratified is that the way we put it together, and I would encourage you to look at the website because we've got one process that you can see which is open. You can see the entire codification, people anywhere, and it needs somebody slightly capable to say, oh, I can do that, I can contextualize it. It's like a recipe, right? And if I don't have an ingredient, I can substitute the ingredient and still— so the spine, the recipe is universal. The idea that children should have agency, No country in the world is saying, no, no, that's a terrible idea. The idea that empathy should be nurtured, nobody's going to say, are you kidding me, right? So our universal proposition has allowed the codification to work, whether it's in China, whether it can go to Lebanon, whether it can be, of course, in India, whether it can go to Vietnam. And we're stoked to see that every country that is testing it and changing the recipe a little bit, that just makes it even better. We say, oh, how interesting, I didn't know you needed to do that. So I think I want to spend a year, especially this year since we are still online for most of the part, to learn. To just understand it's our iterative prototyping time. And I think by next year, we would be having so many more solid insights to shape a far more wider spread. But I'm gonna be everywhere, Mr. Tim Logan. I'm gonna come to you in Bordeaux.

Please, please come.

Of course you are.

No, that's amazing. That's brilliant. But I think the two things on that, I think the context thing is so important and so interesting is that, you know, you can't just drop a recipe into a context and expect it to work, right? You know, the oven will be different, the ingredients will be slightly different, etc., right? So culturally, there's clearly some interesting new flavors that come in.

Absolutely.

But also, also then that I think one of the key pieces is I completely agree, you know, empathy and agency, no, you know, no one will argue with that. You speak to any parent, no one, no one's going to argue with that. The point at which it gets interesting is what you said earlier, I think about mastery and rigor and trying to demonstrate that you can have both, you know, it's not either or you can have a both and package that does that deep rigorous academic knowledge-based mastery and skills-based mastery at the same time as embedding it within real change and developing empathy, developing agency after that. So I think that's, that's an interesting part of the picture, isn't it? In terms of—

No. And I think when you talk about, yeah, when you talk about the evidence of that, it's our alumni. Yeah, absolutely. Incredible. We've been tracking our alumni. We've got around 8 batches that have graduated. We've collected their stories, right? About the way they're navigating the world.. And we've put it together as just exactly their emails. We've asked them whenever they get into college after like 3 months, write us, have we served them well? And it is such a pleasure.

That's so good.

So it's on the alumni site on the website, you can read their stories. Oh my God, that really is the ultimate validation that everything that you're pushing back against, or people might push against you, you have to have such a strong belief that it's not about seeking approval, It's always about seeking meaning. And when that is sound, and that has been validated by the research or your experience, then you must trust it. Because it is very easy to get distracted and diverted by, oh, one year was not so good, so should we change everything? Should we be— no, again, if you have a strong spine and you're not on shaky ground, I mean, the wind will blow, and sometimes it will blow a little fast, but hello, you've got your roots that are really, really strong. So trust that. I nurtured that. Yeah.

Amazing.

Yeah.

And when it's embodied in those young people that have grown because of you in a, in a particular way, because of the experience you've created for them, that's, as you say, the ultimate validation. That's amazing. Wow. Well, thank you, Kiran. It's just such a pleasure to talk to you. I mean, it's so many amazing insights and experience that you've brought to this. And, uh, just, yeah, thank you so much for sharing.

Not at all. Thank you. Amazing. Bye. Thank you.

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