Excerpt from Mumbai Mirror, as told by Lekha Menon On January 16, 2010: Read Full Article
Nisa Godrej swaps balance sheets for a session of story telling at Jafari English High School, Govandi, as part of the TFI initiative….
As executive vice president, business development, Godrej Industries, Nisa Godrej is hardly new to presiding over meetings, issuing orders or commanding attention in clinical settings.
But on Friday, the 30-year-old Harvard graduate was a tad nervous before stepping into one. Reason? Her audience were not suited-booted executives, but a class full of boisterous, noisy and energetic eight-year-olds.
It was quite a change of role for Nisa who played teacher to Class 2 students of Jafari English High School in Govandi. She was there as part of Teach For India’s (TFI) efforts to get sector leaders engaged in the issue of education inequality. The visit also served as a unique finale for the 2009-2010 Fellowship recruitment campaign which ends on January 17.
The contrast couldn’t have been more striking. Here was a corporate hotshot educated in some of the world’s best institutes and on the other hand, were students, hailing from middle to lower-middle class backgrounds in one of the poorest suburbs of the city. But for once, the ‘teaching session’ that lasted almost an hour showed how corporates could effectively contribute towards change, if motivated in the right direction.
The excitement ran high in the corridors as Nisa entered the premises. Clad in a striking black dress, she had an interesting task ahead of her - to read out a chapter from a story book and interact with students. And the lesson for the day was surely a far cry from balance-sheets and bottomlines that the Godrej scion must be used to - about a pup, Pepper, that has three cakes, ignoring his mom’s advice and falls ill.
Accompanied by a TFI ‘fellow’, Neha Jain, a former publishing industry executive who had given up a corporate career to become a teacher in the school, Nisa soon overcame her initial inhibition and mixed freely with the kids - reading out to them, asking them questions, complimenting them and engaging in light banter. Soon, she had the girls eating out of her hands.
