Creating learning atmospheres

good morning everyone it’s lovely to be

here

what is success what does it mean to be

successful is it a fancy car and a house

sparkling jewelry designer clothes

maybe your name in the news or being a

speaker at a tedx event

well i feel success is subjective

for me success is about making a

difference in people’s life who i may or

may not have come in contact with

now don’t get me wrong i’m not saying

that the fame the money the cars the

house is not important or it does not

define success to most people

but what will make you work harder than

you did yesterday is something that will

give you a sense of purpose

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i’m one of the lucky ones who found this

purpose early in life

i grew up with a thought process that

anything is possible

my parents come from a very humble

background they had me

even before they could think of having a

career at the age of 22

my father was not only responsible for a

wife and a child

but gradually his mother and a family of

almost 60 people

i’m not exaggerating i wonder what was

going on in his mind back then

not only did he take care of the family

really well you can see

but he went on to become a very

successful businessman

and an even more successful social

worker so much so that

it has been over 17 years that we have

lost him

but i still meet new people who remember

him fondly

because at some point in their life my

father had helped them

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i take my inspiration from him daily

everything i do

mohi gets most of the credit he rarely

told me what to do

but he always encouraged me to follow my

own path to become my own person

and to make it count he always taught me

to dream big

as soon as i received my mba degree i

returned to india and i started working

on the most

important project of my life of starting

a college

now picture this i am 24 years old i go

up to my mother and i declare

mom i want to start a college

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she immediately responds with uh okay

so what do you need she did not laugh at

me

she did not say something like uh puja

why don’t you start with something

smaller and then you can see how it goes

because by this point i had already

tried to run a manufacturing unit that

belonged to the family

and failed miserably but remember i told

you about the household that believed

anything is possible

i wasn’t lying i remember gaining most

of my confidence in that

moment sometimes it just takes that one

person to have faith in you and then you

can go and do what you need

now this

now this thought of now this thought of

starting a college wasn’t out of the

blue or on a whim

when i was studying in the uk i

had an epiphany i wasn’t dumb

i wasn’t a bad student or i wasn’t bad

at some subjects

i probably just needed to learn better

why couldn’t learning be like this in my

country i thought

there must be so many students just like

me who have not realized their potential

and all they need is a good mentor

or good guidance

so anyway i started with my research

there was so much to do so much to think

about and so much pressure

because i wasn’t merely thinking about

you know

making a product or selling a service i

was thinking about developing human

resource for the country

which would be useful 10 to 20 years

down the line

education is a big responsibility and

should definitely be

treated as such

so i start so anyway i started my

research there was so much to do

right from naming the college to

identifying the land to registering the

foundation

to getting the right teachers to making

sure that the students believe in your

offering the advertising admissions

permissions etc etc etc and i knew

nothing about

about running a college what was i

thinking

so the first thing i did was join an

institute in pune

to learn something and to gain some

experience on the way

because how will i know what kind of

people to hire

if i don’t know what kind of work there

will be

now this path wasn’t easy of course i

met

a large number of people who always

looked at me doubtfully and

told me how difficult this journey would

be and how many hurdles i would face and

blah blah blah but i also met a lot of

encouraging people who

who who made me believe that i can do

this

most didn’t take me seriously because i

was too young to know anything about

anything

but i tried to block these people out

and i focused on the positive

and i focused on my purpose

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so now uh an mba graduate

from a family of an established business

who has nothing to do with education

before this why did i start a college

why did i start an educational institute

and a school for architecture and design

of all the things

i probably just like to torture myself

no but seriously

i wanted to as cliche as it may sound i

wanted to

create a platform for creative courses

there are such few options available for

someone to pursue creativity as

a career and i wanted to make that

available

that gave birth to the satish missal

educational foundation’s

brick school my name is puja missal and

i am the founder director

of this beautiful place

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thank you now an idea remains

just an idea if you cannot translate it

to people and make them believe in it as

much as you do

you can be extremely smart talented

creative

and hard working but you are nothing

without a team

you cannot accomplish everything by

yourself

a team is extremely important

my team at bric is continuously working

to create a platform for students to

grow and learn

the underlying philosophy that we all

believe in is

we are not here to disseminate

information or to create professionals

but we are here to create a holistic

person of anyone and everyone at brick

after all there’s so much information

that is freely available online

that anyone can access at their own time

and what we may teach them today may not

be relevant tomorrow

so education should be something which

makes the child

understand themselves better learn

something about themselves

rather than just learning about all the

subjects

so most of my students have won

a number of trophies awards on local

national and international platforms

they do fairly well in most of the exams

but what i am so proud of my students is

that they are extremely socially

aware and socially sensitive towards

people who are probably less fortunate

than

themselves or less privileged than

themselves

they take up extreme they take up a lot

of initiatives

which are socially relevant as you can

see here

our students selected a street at the

heart of the city and the initiative was

to clean it up and to make it useful for

the community that is living in the

neighborhood

so as you can see the before it was

completely with garbage and debris

and they converted they painted the

walls they changed the flooring they put

some artwork on the wall

they made it more habitable

now the community uses it to sit around

to play the children use it to

as you can see cycle around and through

this project i think my students learned

a lot more about space about humans

about the

requirements than what they would learn

by sitting in the classroom

so these are the kind of things that we

do in school

my the teachers the staff the students

they refer to the college as their

family and just like a family

we support each other and encourage each

other to do better

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yeah just just as a so our college is

probably the only one

where the peons are comfortable enough

to

perform at the cultural annual festival

every year

the first ever scholarship that was

initiated at

brick was initiated by a teacher can you

believe that

i couldn’t so i am extremely grateful

that i have this

i’ve been able to create this family and

i will continue to make it bigger and

better

for moments like these this was a letter

given to me by my students who were

graduating

with a box of beautifully handmade

jewelry

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the fact that i was able to

without even talking to them able to

motivate them to do something by

themselves to explore their creativity

it really warms my heart

these and some other you know small

messages and notes that are left to me

by the students and the teachers

make me realize that the path that i’m

on was chosen for me

and this is definitely my purpose so

what is success then

when you find yourself asking this

question ask yourself

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are you good at something are you happy

and have you made a difference if you

answer

a yes to any of these questions you are

on the right path

and if not what are you waiting for

continue your journey and change those

notes to a yes

for me i ask myself a fourth question am

i making my father proud

and i will continue on this journey

because i am not done yet

and i am not afraid of failure the only

thing that i am scared of however

is the thought of giving up thank you