The Digital Educators (DE) program of The Learning Lab is a course, a skill-based intervention, an arts-based pedagogy, and a perspective building exercise rolled into one.
It builds a new kind of learning and literacy – one that takes into account the importance of the visual, the sonic, and the sensorial, along with the textual, to better navigate our technology driven world.
We work with the firm belief that narrative change in communities requires an ownership over one’s own voice and modes of representation, and hence deeper and sustained engagements with those embedded within grassroots contexts is key to allow for newer insights to emerge.
Our tools are digital. The mobile phone is used as a site of creation and discovery, not just communication. Our DEs learn to experiment with image making techniques, storytelling forms, sound and audioscapes, along with textual iterations to tell their lived experiences. In our pedagogy, conversation and listening are the primary methods of teaching and sharing.
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The DE program has mentored 24 grassroots workers from an intersection of age, work, gender and caste histories, from the states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Jharkhand over the last two and half years. The DE programme is a hybrid course, where regular and systematic engagement with mentors is ensured through online and periodic in-person workshops. Weekly Addas or collective sessions between the mentees and mentors include both skilling and discussions on various socio-poltical and cultural thematics.
Collective and individual learning processes nurture new ideas and iterations that mentors guide and work into co-creating materials with our DE’s. Some of the work co-created with the first batch of DE’s – travelling in numerous festivals and forums – is published on The Third Eye.
The DE program works with the support and guidance of our Knowledge Partners: civil society organizations working for decades on education, alternative media, gender based violence and community development. Doosra Dashak: Foundation for Education and Development (Jaipur, Rajasthan), Sadbhavana Trust (Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh), Foundation for Awareness, Counselling and Education (Pakur, Jharkhand), Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (Ajmer, Rajasthan), and Sahjani Shiksha Kendra (Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh) provide advisory direction to our programme.
The rootedness of the DEs within the field also paves future pathways wherein DEs are made capable of working with local organizations to bring field based knowledge, practices and experiences into the digital space in newer, robust and creative forms. Over time, our vision is to initiate a hub and spoke model, where our DEs transform into the role of mentors in order to initiate similar learning hubs within their community contexts.
We believe that over time, this transformative potential can bring in sustained narrative change within local communities, and in the larger practice of knowledge production.
After 2.5 years of engagement, we have shortlisted 10 DEs who are now transitioning to become mentors with support from the Learning Lab team. These 10 DEs (7 women and 3 men) belong to 5 civil society organisations—Doosra Dashak: Foundation for Education and Development (Jaipur, Rajasthan), Sadbhavana Trust (Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh), Foundation for Awareness, Counselling and Education (Pakur, Jharkhand), Mahila Jan Adhikar Samiti (Ajmer, Rajasthan), and Sahjani Shiksha Kendra (Lalitpur, Uttar Pradesh).
