Gratitude in Action

In November 2019 NIIT Foundation (NF) celebrated 15 years of establishment. To honor this milestone, we could think of no better action than to express our gratitude and appreciation to all those who helped us reach where we are today. This included the NF team, NGO partners, funders, students, parents, and many others.

We wanted to demonstrate our gratitude to the stakeholders with our actions in addition to our words.   Genuine Contact has been a key ingredient of our success in recent years, providing tools and methods to support organisational development and success by using beliefs, values, structures, and spirit of Genuine Contact. It seemed natural to use these tools and methods to show our gratitude in action to our stakeholders.

Enhancing a Life-Nurturing Environment

NIIT Foundation, being a member of the Genuine Contact Organization, uses our work and learning with Genuine Contact to support the development of a life-nurturing environment that nourishes our students and other stakeholders as whole persons.

As an example, to show our gratitude, we decided to listen to our employees’ voices better and create a healthier and life nurturing work environment. Some changes we implemented from this deep listening focused on change in our employee policies to include Saturday leave, encourage work from home, etc. We also work to co-create system and process with collective wisdom. This invites employee to be more participative in organisational deliverables, commitments, and growth.

Gratitude in Action for our NGO Partners

We demonstrated gratitude in action to our NGO partners too. For this 15^th anniversary celebration, we chose some NGO Partners based on needs we had observed during our visits to their locations. For chosen NGO partners, we offered our gratitude through supporting them in setting up their centres, training the Master Trainers and other Trainers, and supporting them with the literacy program.

One of the NGOs that we selected to show our gratitude was Prayas Juvenile Aid center (Prayas) in Jahangirpuri, New Delhi. Prayas has been associated with us since 2018 and is implementing a Financial Literacy program at their centres. Prayas has impacted more than 2000 beneficiaries and also trained 10 master trainers to conduct additional Financial Literacy programs in the New Delhi area.

Prayas, through its inclusive, self-sustainable and integrated community-based model, encompasses components of education, vocational training, livelihood promotion, Microfinance, Self Help Groups, Economic Empowerment for Youth and Women leading to financial inclusion. All of these programs create opportunities for the marginalized and deprived section of the population to lead a decent life. The holistic and integrated approach they use makes the Prayas model quite innovative.

To show our gratitude to Prayas, NIIT Foundation organized a workshop for their trainers to improve their training delivery capability by using the Genuine Contact approach.

Workshop Day

With deep appreciation, I am happy to share the experience we had while expressing gratitude in action towards Prayas Juvenile Aid Centre at Delhi on facilitation skills.

The workshop was conducted in Whole Person Process Facilitation (WPPF). To begin the day, we invited participants into series of activities known as a Transfer In. This opening is designed to support the collective to listen, reflect, absorb and connect effectively, focus on the purpose of the meeting, and invites everyone to have a fair chance to contribute. It prepares the participants to be open and ready for the learning they are about to experience.

All the activities in the facilitation were chosen keeping in mind trainer’s interaction with students. Throughout the day, each trainer made their contributions with a glimpse of happiness on their faces. The WPPF container created both space and structure to tap into the wisdom of each participant. It allowed each one of them to be genuine and use collective wisdom to collaborate. The collective wisdom came together to create and innovate, to find solutions and decide next steps, simply to do their work in the best possible way.

The entire workshop was life nurturing for all the participants, and they all appreciated the tools and methods they learned. It was a whole new experience for all the participants. We hope that they will take their learning to the classroom and to the students and make the learning process a life nurturing environment for all of them.

Rich Learnings

Participants expressed great gratitude for what they had experienced.

“It is very important that all the students get noticed and every student learns in a different way. The facilitation training taught us about different types of learning and different types of students so that we can plan our sessions accordingly”
~ Ravinder Kaur

“Involvement of each student in the class is very important. Activity-based classroom and teaching will hold the interest of the students and they will also give complete participation in the activities.”
~ Asha