Has The Goa School been able to demonstrate a clear social impact?
Are we helping to build a more equitable society with our efforts to create greater equity of opportunity to learn, network, grow?
These are hard questions to answer.
It is our endeavour to introduce youth to transformative ideas, building a community of support around them, while also offering a platform for Indians to ‘give back’ with their knowledge networks and resources. These processes are underway. However, to determine the extent of our impact, we await the results of a baseline survey.
Meanwhile, we can share some management insights and the wonderful feedback we have been receiving from our Fellows. With their permission, we are showcasing some of their responses, under their individual storyboards below.
We have proof of concept, and have transitioned into a public Trust
The Goa School’s inaugural session of a week-long immersion programme in Goa was launched in September 2021. Since then, we have held five batches of immersions, followed by yearlong mentoring, and monthly Open Talks. Additional activities are planned for 2025-26. The programmes are not without challenges, but we’ve got a model that works.
In August 2023, The Goa School was registered as a Trust. The transition from a social impact enterprise to a Trust is complete, with a fresh bank account, website, and applications for tax free status. An all women Board of Trustees meets quarterly to assess progress, and to oversee the work of its advisors. The Goa School may now raise funds from the public for its work. For donations, please contact madhuri@thegoaschool.org.
Our community is growing
By the first quarter of 2025, we have built a community of nearly 100 people directly linked to The Goa School. This includes 25 Fellows, and over 50 mentors, speakers and facilitators. This community is linked to each other via The Goa School Hive Mind, a resource group for life.
Our Fellows are mostly within the 21-29 yr age group, and the majority are women. The Goa School attracted applicants from Goa and other parts of the country such as Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, and Delhi. See our fellows line-up.
Mentors specialise in a variety of topics including management, economics, conservation, photography, media and more. The Goa School has attracted professionals from Goa, Delhi and other places in India, as well as from Bhutan, Canada, Italy, Kenya, Mauritius, South Korea, South Africa, and The Netherlands. They have outstanding academic achievements from Cambridge, CASS Business School, Columbia, Harvard, North Carolina, Oxford and Wageningen universities, to name a few. They are also powerful people in public life, including CEOs, well-known photographers and authors. See a sampling of our mentors line-up. | Watch our speakers online.
We have hosted over 35 Open Talks, with speakers keen to ‘give back’ to society what they have learnt over their professional lives. Topics covered include Diversity, AI, Mental Health, Human Behaviour, Changing Career Streams, Photography for Change, Water and Sanitation, Changemaking and much more. All talks are recorded, and available online for anyone who wishes to view them.
Storyboards
The first batch of Mentors and Fellows ended their yearlong mentorship in September 2022, giving us our first batch of graduates from The Goa School. This page features storyboards from some of them : Rohit Kumar | Madhu Priya | Karen Dafini | Gauri Khamkar | Simran Varma. They graduated in September 2022, and are still a part of the Goa School Hive Mind. The second batch graduated in March 2023. Here are some of their stories: Sharukh Sheikh | Stephanie Mani. More stories coming soon.
The Goa School encourages positive action and tries to pre-select candidates with a penchant for making change, and it does not ‘de-select’ candidates for a lack of these qualities either. We also do not ‘police’ the mentoring relationships, allowing many flowers to bloom. We believe that everyone can benefit — possibly in uncountable ways — from new knowledge and networks. We believe that learning and changing mindsets is a transactional process that takes time, and that we cannot force-feed transformation.
For further insights, watch a discussion between The Goa School’s founder-director, advisor and operations head, marking two years of operations.
Following
The Goa School has gathered interest from people around the world. Since January 2023, we have received 2.2K visitors with a high level of engagement on our .com website, which was recently migrated to .org, for which we will report analytics soon. At the close of the first quarter of 2025, we have a following of 520 on Facebook, and 592 on Linked IN and 140 on Instagram.