Project Execution

Manthan Sanstha has run a school near the area of the Sambhar Salt Lake in Rajasthan since 2009, focusing first on girls education and children coming from challenging backgrounds, it expanded to a school providing quality education to boys and girls from various backgrounds. As the organization was preparing to increase the founders base of the school and pitch to new potential supporters, they were looking for an impact report that would showcase their work and support their cause.

Having a sector knowledge, Shaurya was very interested in gaining a deeper understanding of running a school in remote areas. He was genuinely curious about how to run a school in areas with very low literacy and the individual stories.

As Ashna explains, the kick-start of the project with Shaurya was great, they had a good conversation and shared required information from both sides. Shaurya’s background in the sector made the conversation very easy as he would quickly understand their requirements. However, what Shaurya expected to be an easy 2 weeks project extended to 6 months due to covid pandemic, unexpected workload and loss of connection with the NGO due to their other engagements. As he states: “After you lose the connectivity, it is difficult to get the project going again. Aashima [from Chezuba] would push me, I would push the NGO and so on. It really takes everyone’s involvement to complete the project.” 

“Despite the struggling communication the project turned out really very well,” Ashna smiles, adding that after receiving the final document from Shaurya within the new deadline “my senior was also impressed, the way he formatted, the designing, everything was really good.”

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Challenges faced

Both Ashna and Shaurya expressed that the issue was the loss of connectivity several times during the project due to both of their work schedules changes. At the beginning, Ashna got very involved in another project of the nonprofit and once the corona pandemic hit, Shaurya’s workload increased and he had to put the volunteering project on hold.

Ashna remembers: “Aashima played a really important role of getting us connected again.” At one point of time Ashna asked Shaurya to discontinue the project if he is too busy. “But I think he really wanted to do this project. I think we both had an understanding of each other and kept coming back. I gave him time when he said he will come back. And after I gave him a deadline, cause I had pressure from seniors, he updated me on everything on time.”

Despite heavy workload, Shaurya explains without hesitation his motivation behind volunteering for this project: “You cannot not finish it. When you know the situation, the organization, the context. It's just impossible not to finish it - it would get a lot of cruelty not to finish it.”