So what next for each of us

Shona's update, projects I have planned for India:

1. Setting up a Youth Leadership programme with Seagull
2. Helping to focus the Seagull Peaceworks project across schools in India
3. Presentation of my work in NI with the Paul Hamlyn Foundation
4. Heading to Singapore to work with Kentake, my Nesta co-fellow

Project 1: The Nesta placement at Seagull with Naveen Kishore. My work is always harder to explain than Raymie's but here goes. I spend my time between two of the Seagull Foundation centres. One is a publishing house where they publish an amazing selection of books, beautifully produced and on all kinds of subject matter, from art, poetry and literature to film, history, social science and politics. A fascinating range of people come through the place to discuss book projects, films, animations and there is a great creative energy. Books are edited and designed from this space so I can see the whole process. The team have made me more than welcome and there's always a great supply of coffee and chocolate. The project that I am developing with Naveen and the team in this space is a youth leadership programme. India, like everywhere else in the world right now, puts an enormous pressure on school going young people to achieve. Don't forget there are still mind boggling statistics of young people without access to any education. Parental pressure to achieve and work your way to a good paying corporate job is enormous.

So I am tasked with developing a programme that gives young graduates and post graduates a chance to pursue other options before they make their minds up about their futures. Seagull have come up with an idea called Choice funded by the Ford Foundation and I am developing it as a programme to place graduate students into internships of anything between 3 months and one year, all of the placements will be with organisations who are in some way working in the development sector to create better quality of lives for their fellow human beings.

Right now I am meeting with NGOs, organisations working in health, disability, child poverty, trafficking, women's rights, education, arts, and more to get a sense of what kind of young person, with what kind of skills, working on what kind of project, would be of benefit to them. Later I will do a call for young people (18-25 yr olds) who are interested in interning, and the real task will be to ensure the right fit so that both the hosting organisations and the young people going to work with them have a mutually beneficial experience. Ultimately it may even result in some of the brightest young people setting up their own social enterprises...
It is a great project to be working on and much needed to develop new young leaders for India's future, but much is still to be done so it's a busy time.

Project 2: I spend the other half of my time at another of Seagull's Centres. An Arts and Media resource centre with an excellent archive of books, films, music, photographs and artworks. It also houses a gallery with a new exhibition each month. From here the team run arts and education programmes in schools. One of their major initiatives called Peaceworks arose as a response to the Gujarat genocide in 2002, where almost 3,000 Muslim people were murdered by Hindu nationalists. India prides itself on being a secular society and the shock of what happened in Gujarat provoked many into a proactive response. At Seagull they embarked on an ambitious programme to try and raise awareness and interactive activities that underline the core values of living in peace in schools across the subcontinent. Many interesting initiatives and resources have been developed through this programme with artists, theatre groups, film-makers working with young people in schools. They have published a book of young people's peace poems, embarked on major kites for peace project, conducted visits to Pakistan and now a call for peace stories for a new publication.

With continuing conflicts on many of its internal borders, as well as the ongoing violent conflict with Pakistan, and secularism in India under constant threat, this is a vitally important project.
As with any risk-taking project with such a huge ambition Peaceworks has had its successes, but also been fraught with difficulties in terms of its reach and impact.
It has a great team and excellent resources and my task is to work with them to develop a long-term and developmental plan for the project that can be delivered in the short and long-term. No small task, but we begin in earnest this Monday by coming together as a team to start to map out a plan. It has a long way to go, but from humble beginnings.......

Project 3:
One of the things I do at home, along with business partner Frances Macklin through our company Rubyblue, is find good projects for the Paul Hamlyn Foundation to fund. Over the last 4 years we have supported many excellent projects in rural and urban areas that give young people the chance to develop through innovative arts activities. This week I had the real privilege of seeing presentations on all the work that the Paul Hamlyn Foundation fund in India, from improving the rights of rag pickers in Delhi to supporting the impoverished children of migrant workers and prosititutes; women's empowerment programmes in Rajasthan and peace building programmes in Gujarat. In turn I presented on PHF's work in NI with young people in a post-conflict society. Although the context and focus is different, it was really interesting to see how many of the same issues emerge. A struggle for governmental recognition for this kind of voluntary sector work, always a battle for funding, uncertainties about the future, concerns about whether any of it really makes a difference.
The Paul Hamlyn Foundation have asked me to carry out research for them during my time here so I will be involved in an ongoing exchange with organisations across India looking at creative approaches to helping young people who are excluded from access to basic human rights. You can only be humbled by both the dedication and the scale of the difficulties people working in this area face here in India, I have no doubt that I have more to learn than offer. It will be a real challenge to draw together useful research in a short time frame but I am passionate about the task, will encounter amazing people and projects along the way.........

Project 4:
As part of the Nesta fellowship we are each assigned a co-mentor or fellow. I am delighted to be working with Kentake Chinyelu Hope who has completed her placement at the Science Centre in Singapore. We are all committed to doing a presentation of our findings in the host country once the placement is completed. Kentake is doing hers next week in Singapore, so I'm off on Monday to Singapore for a different adventure and can't wait to hear about the work she has been doing, in an area that is unfamiliar turf for me. So I will come back from that experience with a story to tell......