Going to School

Span Magazine, January/February 2007

Lisa Heydlauff’s office is no ordinary workplace: an endearing pug pup bounds over to greet me as I step inside; its colorfully-painted walls are festooned with artwork. Hundreds of storybooks from around the world, as diverse in language as in design, line the bookshelves. Creatively designed posters, T-shirts and calendars can be spotted in different parts of the room.

Creativity and color are, in fact, catchwords for the ‘business’ that Heydlauff is engaged in: that of encouraging underprivileged Indian children to go to school through her New Delhi-based not-for-profit organization, ‘Going to School’ (GTS). 31-year old Lisa - whose parents live in Scottsdale, Arizona - moved to India in 1998 with a little money, a few contacts, and the dream to do something for the welfare of women and children. After a brief stint with a bridal magazine in New Delhi, Lisa was hired by UNICEF as a Communications Consultant to document success stories of UNICEF projects in government schools in states across India, including Orissa, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Gujarat and Haryana.

These travels were to change the direction of Lisa’s life. It was during these travels, meeting children who traveled through diverse geographical and cultural terrain to attend school, that Lisa conceptualized GTS, a multimedia campaign that, she says, “celebrates every child's right to go to school and participate in an inspiring education that is relevant to their lives.” Her idea was to create imaginative and inspiring media that captured the real-life stories of everyday children going to school across India. Though she admits that it was initially difficult to find seed funding for GTS, she found generous support from the Bharti Foundation (the charitable arm of Indian conglomerate Bharti Group) in 2001 for the creation of ‘Going to School in India’, a children’s book featuring 25 ways of going to school. For GTS, there has been no looking back since.

Today, ‘Going to School in India’ has found widespread success among children and education practitioners alike: 10 mini-books have been translated into Telegu, Tamil, Oriya, Kannada and Hindi, to be given to children free of cost in Government schools; 500,000 mini-books will be distributed to 45,000 primary schools in Orissa, reaching over 5 million children. In addition to the books are 9 mini-films - each of which recounts a day in the life of a child going to school somewhere in India - that are aired twice a day by the popular children’s channels POGO, Cartoon Network and National Geographic. Since its founding, Going to School has received support from a number of US-based funding agencies, including the Global Fund for Children in Washington, D.C, Global Giving, and Ashoka Innovators for the Public who have nominated her as an Ashoka Fellow.

Lisa firmly believes that inspiration is a key element in a child’s life, and GTS’ programs – which focus on telling positive stories of children who succeed in going to school despite geographical, physical or social challenges - reflect this. “I realized there was lots of media coverage about what did not work. But what about that which did work? I believe inspiration can change the world. And, as I traveled more, I felt positive stories about education could be told in a celebratory, transcendent way that showed schools could be fun, relevant to children’s lives. And that communities, organizations, and individuals could change the way children go to school, if they believe in possibilities – if they try,” she says.

GTS is currently in its second phase with ‘Girl Stars’, a project that creates icons of everyday women and girls who have, by going to school, changed their lives and the lives of people in their communities. For the project, Lisa and 6 of her Delhi-based colleagues traveled thousands of kilometers through the Hindi-speaking belt of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Jharkhand and Madhya Pradesh, interacting with people in cities, towns and villages, to find 15 women icons who could be icons for other girls, encouraging them to stay in school.

A few Girl Stars include Madhuri Kumari, a woman who defied social convention to become the leader of her village in Uttar Pradesh; and Anita Khushwaha, a 17 year old woman who became the first woman-beekeeper in Bihar. Each woman succeeded in completing her schooling despite challenging circumstances, and their stories advocate education as a platform to achieving life and career aspirations. “Girl Stars are extraordinary tales of ordinary girls,” explains Lisa. “It’s about what one million girls do, not one in a million. A Girl Star is a young girl or woman who able to do what she does because she is a part of a larger community where everyone has to work together to help things change; she had the courage to begin it, and the strength to take everyone with her.” ‘Girl Stars’ will be rolled out on TV channels and radio stations by UNICEF in 2007.

Next, Lisa and her Delhi-based team of 6 are looking forward to GTS’ latest and perhaps most ambitious project, ‘Be an Entrepreneur’ (BE!). This 50-book, 13-part movie, and 30-part radio series will tell 50 entrepreneurial stories to underprivileged children in India, to enable them to change their lives, their communities’ lives and participate in change in India as a whole. In particular, BE! aims to empower children from underprivileged backgrounds with skills that they can use to generate income and participate in positive community change -- once they have finished their education.

Indeed, although GTS communicates in colour and fun, it is being seen as a powerful force for positive change in children’s lives. And GTS only looks set to accomplish more in the years to come: Lisa hopes that BE! will potentially be a model that can be taken to scale across India, and around the world. Going global, perhaps, may be next on the cards for Lisa and Going to School. Except that Lisa, for now, has no plans of “going home”.

“Everyday I wake up feeling that what we have to do today is important. It may not be changing the way children see their lives everyday, but on a broader scale, for a moment, it is,” she says about GTS. “Inspiration comes in a second and changes the direction of your life. That is what we do, we inspire children and inspire change, as many days out of the week that we possibly can.”

Check out Going To School at www.goingtoschool.com