A Decade with AIF

Receiving the Award from Ravi

I completed a decade with the American India Foundation on the 1st of September 2014. My memory goes back to 25th of June 2004 when we had the first meeting with the APC and Secretary School and Mass Education Dept., where the intervention was approved in principle and September 2004 when the MoU was signed by the then State Project Director Santosh Sarangi. Personally for me it has been a great journey and I have learnt a lot. For a person who had never wanted to work in Odisha, I am amazed and at times shocked at how fast a decade has passed. In fact I had been so involved with my program giving my heart and soul to it and having literally ate, slept and dreamt about the program all the time, coupled with a great team who have continued with me for so long, that I have literally  and never realized as to when a decade had slipped away. 

Core Group Meeting, Bangalore

I feel the program has not only provided a platform  for me but for all the team members, to unleash their creativity, tap their potential and significantly increase their knowledge and understanding as far as how learning happens, and the centrality of techno-pedagogy / instructional design in increasing learning outcomes is concerned. This knowledge will last a lifetime.

From the time we started in 2004 the program has undergone a lot of changes with the major inflection in 2010 when we introduced the "centralized training model" to learning achievement tracking

from 2013 on wards.

I was given the "long service award" by Ravi Kumar, CEO AIF in Bangalore as part of the DE Core Group meeting, held in the month of June 2014. Seriously I never expected an award for something which is so integrally interwoven with my life but then an award always makes one feel good - as after all I am but a fragile human being.