Thursday Seminar
Date: 19 January, 2017
Time: 11:30 - 12:30
Venue: Main Building Lecture Room - G1
Coordinator: Prof. Jyotsna Vijapurkar
Title: How do we create optimal conditions for learning: Using a Sport for Development Approach, Speaker: Havovi Wadia, the Magic Bus,
Abstract:
Magic Bus hypothesizes that when equipped with a minimum quality of education and suitable life skills, and mentored into livelihoods, young people will make choices that enable them to move out of the cycle of poverty. The Magic Bus experience over the last 17 years has led us to integrate our education and livelihoods programs into a single journey of adopting positive behaviours over the most formative years of an individual’s life i.e. ages 12 to 18+. The programme currently reaches 350,000 children and 10,000 youth in 21 states across India.
The programme is based on two core pillars – collaboration and experiential learning. It is Magic Bus’ belief that the challenges that adolescents and young people face, require multiple stakeholders to work together to optimize impact. It therefore actively works with education partners and livelihood partners to enable the completion of secondary education and the transition into the world of work.
In order to help adolescents and young people avail of these opportunities, Magic Bus works to build their life skills and also to mobilise parental and community support for their aspirations. This part of the programme draws a great deal from an experiential learning approach called Sport for Development, where the playground is the learning space.
About the speaker:
Havovi Wadia is Director, Impact at Magic Bus, responsible primarily for the gathering and presentation of evidence that provides proof of concept for the Magic Bus programme. She is also the Child Protection Officer for the organization, facilitating discussions on Child Protection across the organization, and building ways to make the organization more aware of and responsive to safeguarding requirements for its primary stakeholders.
She has a background in the Humanities with a focus on Women’s Studies. In recent years she has specialized in Childhood Studies. She has over 18 years of work experience across the finance, academic and development sectors. The last eleven years of her career have been dedicated to understanding how best to engage with children and youth. This includes developing content for children, designing research with and for them, and interrogating mainstream ideas of childhood and gender. Her work experience includes stints with CRY (Child Rights and You) and assignments with Praxis – Institute for Participatory Practices.