Aditi Agrawal—leading by example….

Meet Aditi Agrawal, Director of Bloomz International School. She talks passionately about her school where they recognize that all students are uniquely talented. The school has an exceptionally supportive community, whereby students develop positive relationships and relish the opportunity to realize their individual potential to the full. Learning at Bloomz is highly student-centred, engaging and inquiry based. Through a broad range of experiences in and beyond school, students become confident, optimistic, compassionate and internationally-minded young adults, ready to find their place in the world.

Tell us something about your life.

Since 2007, I , Aditi Agrawal have been associated with the school. I am born and brought up in Delhi, have completed my MBA in HR, married and settled in Goa, I have a supporting husband, my son is 7years old & 5 year old daughter. I took my initial steps into the school starting in 2007. I started by substituting as an assistant teacher with the playgroup. I soon realised I loved interacting with toddlers and kids of the school. Under the guidance of my mum in law, I am learning the ways to enable the school to reach great heights.

The School was started by Mrs.Maya Agrawal, she holds a degree in Education. Aged 62, She has two sons and while she struggled to find a good school for her children in the late 80’s , the urge to start a school of her own got stronger. Her dream was realised in 2005 to start a school that has innovative learning methods.

What is the secret of your success and what does success mean to you?

Secret to success is when the entire culture of an organization changes and all understand the priorities in the organization. In order to have this change in culture we work on a step by step change in the little things to make a difference in the big picture. Success to me will be when all my stakeholders i.e students, teachers, parents believe that education is a lifelong process of learning. One should never feel that there’s nothing more that I can learn. You have to keep updating your knowledge whether you are in school, at home, college, or work. Success for is to inculcate in the students of my school the ability to accept change and adapt to any learning process in life.

Any striking incident in your life that had a deep impact on you or changed the course of your life?

“The best inheritance a parent can give their child is a few minutes of their time each day.”

I strongly believe that the world needs is not education or knowledge , we need happiness in whatever we do and since the time we are born happiness comes from a happy home. There have been many instances while being associated with school that have made me realise that we need to provide our children with a happy home which makes them emotionally stronger and thus enables them to cope with anything outside the home, be it school, work pressure or even other relationships. 

Describe yourself as a person. 

“I am passionate about my work because I love what I do and set goals for myself and am always open to learning in the process. I like meeting new people and learning about their lives and their backgrounds. Almost always find common ground with strangers, and I like making people feel comfortable in my presence. I find this skill is especially helpful when talking to children. I believe in collaborative ways of working with others and am of the faith that everyone has the competence to do their best.”

What are the challenges you face?

Challenges are always taken as positive sign while working. It makes you work harder and also lets you come out stronger than before. The Bloomz  journey to set in motion a change process in the mind sets of stakeholders to understand the true meaning of education has been a challenge, one which we are and will overcome bit by bit.

How do you balance work and family?

My husband, Anurag Agrawal has been a co-partner when it comes to sharing responsibilities with our children and support me at work whenever I need. With shared responsibilities at home I am able to come to school without worrying about the time apart from my children. We make sure at least one meal of the day is together, across the table we play games and talk about our day. It keeps us connected as a family. As said before a happy home is what helps us cope with any task outside our home environment. We stay in a joint family with eleven of us in the house. The entire family shares the same vision for Bloomz International School – To be a school with a difference and where knowledge has no limits.

What are your future plans?

The school has recently been affiliated to CBSE. The next few years I want to focus on a cultural change to be accepted across the organization. To have a culture of  being an ongoing learner be it the students or teachers of the Bloomz Family. The acceptance of having inclusive education for children who have slow learning abilities and the development of empathy and tolerance for each other within the school and eventually when they part ways from us and go into the outside world.

whats your USP?

The USP for the school is our holistic approach to be a happy school. We believe that every child is different and has the ability to do best in something. The school provides them with a happy environment to enable them to learn in different ways. Bloomz wants to raise world citizens who are who are self-motivated and creative, who can think, question and reason out logically; who are independent, confident and capable of taking wise decisions.

We have innovative subjects within the curriculum to enable our students to be in sync with what’s trending. Each class is equipped with its own library to inculcate the habit of reading within the school. We lay a lot of emphasis on the habit of reading. Geekology is a trademark subject of Bloomz where we train the students in latest computer world trends. The school has an extensive program where students are exposed to a variety of sports, Indian & western music which involves vocals and instruments. The students are trained for band choir which gives them a first  hand knowledge of playing flutes, bugles, drums and trumpets. We believe in inclusive education and have a dedicated special educator to assist children who have special needs to cope up with school.

Healing the World with Yoga…..

Heal Tokyo’ is a philanthropic project initiated by Indian born Nupur Tewari. Nupur Tewari is a confident woman, a proud mother, a generous philanthropist, a charismatic teacher, a proud Indian and a serene believer and doer of yoga and peace. Her ‘Heal Tokyo’ project is a unique charity project that anticipates bringing equality and peace in the life of people reached through it. Nupur enjoys helping others because it just comes natural to her. If the opportunity to help someone else arises, she automatically wants to help them. If for some reason she misses out on this opportunity, she feels guilty about it. By helping others, she gets a rush of happiness.Nupur feels that her work is a gift in that you are allowed into the intimate lives of wonderful people in your efforts to assist them in their journey of recovery, where victims become survivors, and systems bend to meet the needs of the most vulnerable individuals in our society. Her work gives her the opportunity to work in a variety of settings and work towards multidimensional collaborative change. By working in this field, she is able to empower, advocate, motivate,  connect, and encourage resilience. Making this world a better place one person at a time, is worth it. Yoga gives her the opportunity to help people from all walks of life in a multitude of settings. It teaches her to respect the vulnerability, the relationship, the person’s right to choose, their suffering, the resources, and the responsibility we have in making the world a better place to live in. She always wanted a profession where She is able to help empower individuals and families and pull communities together in a way that fosters both human and global well-being.  To truly make a difference and to be the change she wants to see in the world, she thought she must embrace it with her vocation. That is why she chose to start Heal Tokyo. She chose it because the principles and code of ethics are directly in line with her world view.  The principles of self determination, cultural competency, social justice, and advocacy describe her own values.  Her work gives her a way to put these values into practice and allows her to have a job that she truly believes in.  She believes that we should be the change, big or small, and have the privilege of working towards this every day. Helping others is her innate nature. It is part of the fabric of who she is. She thinks it has a lot to do with how she was raised. Nupur feels a sense of overall happiness and fulfillment when She is able to help others and she believes that it is a moral responsibility of every human being to help one another when in need. “Because I want to know that the work that I do is having an impact on people’s lives. I don’t have to wonder if my efforts have made a difference. I get to see them every day in the lives of the people that I work with.”

Tell us about how it all began?

‘Heal Tokyo’ is a charity project. I always wanted to pay back my country of origin as well the country where I have been living in from the last 16 years. Heal Tokyo fulfills both of my desires at one go. People from all age groups in Tokyo are encouraged to take part in international yoga sessions in open parks, cafés and homes. Yoga and meditation help people to connect with their inner soul, peace and serenity out of their busy and robotized life. The contributions from yoga sessions are used to finance the primary education of kids in urban slums of different cities of India. Our main aim is bringing peace in people’s life, make them love themselves and spread love and positivity through yoga. In return with their donations, they get the chance to support the education of underprivileged children in India. Kindness multiplies when we add our efforts; who knows, a slum kid we nurture today may rise to be another change maker tomorrow. I aim to end illiteracy from India and give underprivileged children a better life through education. Kids in urban slums are much more vulnerable to be in wrong paths if not given a proper channel of education and guidance. That is why through Heal Tokyo project, I have chosen to finance the primary education of kids living in urban slums across different cities in India.

I was born in a traditionally educated family where I got my real education of life, love, compassion, loyalty, patience, sincerity, kindness, sacrifice and selflessness. But unlike many of you I didn’t go to any reputed school. I did my education until 10th grade from a village and I had to walk 3 kms daily to go to my school, every day in sunny and rainy days too. During monsoon we had mud up-to my knee. Yes, we didn’t have electricity too. We got the electricity in our village when I was in 7th grade. I was blessed to have awesome parents but my mother was so busy to take care of the joint family that she hardly had any time for herself and my father trusted and loved me so much that he was more worried that I might get sick studying so much, every day. Literally I had no one to guide me.
I moved to the small town from 11th grade where I used to come during my vacations. I felt like an alien among those girls from reputed English medium schools.Those experiences made me realize about the challenges of those people who are neglected socially, financially and demographically. Those experiences inspired me to connect with them and understand their feelings and motives for life in an emotional and futuristic manner. I felt the pain of those people who were disadvantaged to be hailing from underprivileged, unserved and uneducated society. I personally had the experiences of being discriminated on the ground of my origination, language skills, brutal honesty, undiplomatic and my subtle nature. That made me strong and the so called hyped weaknesses became my reasons to improve and be strong. The experiences of being modest, hailing from rural background and introvert were heart breaking at that time for a girl of age 16 years. But, the same quality made me a better human and developed a motivation in me to connect with underprivileged.Ironically, no one worked outside from my family. When I was in the last year of my university, I was offered to teach in another college in Calcutta University, but of course my goal was never to stay in a small town to be a lecturer and settle with small things. Those few months of teaching helped me to save some money to get out of that town and explore a world for myself. And then, my journey started to learn about my life and its connectivity with other people while working in MNCs’ and international organizations. I left my home with INR 500 which I earned and saved during my job as a guest lecturer to explore my tyranny with life and build my world in which I knew no one. I had seen the days when I survived on two times snacks only in cities like Mumbai during my exploration with myself.I found my new world and my adventure with the teaching in schools in Japan.I have experiences of teaching international students in more than 37schools of Japan for more than 15 years. That made me self-sustainable in one of the most organized country in the world. I feel blessed to know Japan very closely being with only Japanese people there and learn their culture from the grassroots level.
My passion for working with people even took me to host TV shows in Japan in Japanese which made me the first Indian to do so ever in Japan and an anchor at various national and international events there. I have been part of various modelling assignments in Japanese commercials and Japanese movies. My passion still continues to inspire people through connection and communication.

What is the secret of your success?

Let me say what I mean by success: success is the ability of individuals to reach their own goals and achieve their own purposes. I do not mean goals such as becoming a movie star, or winning the Nobel Prize in literature or becoming the President. Or simply making more money than everybody else. By that standard virtually no one is successful. But I think it is possible for these individuals and others to find in other ways those satisfactions that are associated with those lofty achievements, namely, recognition, admiration and a sense of importance. Your success is completely dependent upon your mindset. For example, if you want to earn a million dollars, you have to have a millionaire mindset. If you don’t have what you want in life yet, you’re about to learn how to create that with the power of your mind. A lot of people think there’s some secret that successful people know that they don’t and that is something they must find out before they can be successful themselves. But, that isn’t the way it really is. In fact, there is no secret to success where people can just find the missing clue, flip the switch and be successful overnight. The secret of success is in oneself, not in ‘pulls’, outside influence, or capital. This is one of the reasons that the poor young man and young woman who find themselves utterly dependent upon their own effort are largely the ones who win out in life, because their very lacks drive them into themselves as their only chance. There is one overriding quality of mind and personality that weighs more strongly than anything else in determining eventual success. It is character. Eventual success depends more than anything else on the ability to keep striving in the face of disappointment and rejection. To be successful you need :
-Emotions to feel and connect.
-Passion and determination to bring the change.
-And a desire to improve and to face all the difficulties and keep continuing even when you fail and situation demands you to give up.You’ll feel slowly this universe is bowing down in front of you. And remember failure is a necessary step in success.

Successful social entrepreneurs are passionate leaders of change. We all want to see the change in the world then why not be the one and spread the light. When you’ll see that you are the reason of that change you’ll spread your arms with a smile of full satisfaction on your face. A desire to improve others lives of their peers and their community is a characteristic that encourages social entrepreneurs to continue their work. Giving back to the society is what we should all do today and here social entrepreneurs are many steps ahead than others. Social entrepreneurship is what happens when the creative and the practical become one. Spread love, positivity and education and let’s make this world a better place for our next generations.

My stance with Yoga and Charity
I was asked by many in several times that why I need to be so different and passionate about charity when I can lead a beautiful life without much effort in a Japan? Specially When I am a woman.
I have grown up seeing my parents voluntarily helping children by serving food, buying books and paying their school fees, even some of them used to stay at our place during the exam times as they didn’t have enough facilities and environment to study. And I was taught to do the same for others too. Yoga had always been a part of my family since my childhood. I hailed from a family which strongly believed in Vedic principles and its features for health and peace. That inspired me to do different types of Yoga since my childhood and the journey still continues. Since 2003, I have been spreading Indian culture through dance, yoga, food, festivals and cultural sessions. I was so engrossed in all the above activities that people in Fukuoka, Japan started referring me as an unofficial cultural ambassador of India to Japan. Until 2014, Yoga for me was my personal aid for peace and health. From 2014, I started conducting Yoga sessions across various community places in Japan voluntarily and inviting them to learn more about Indian culture over yoga sessions and Indian food delicacies.

The mission I have started with HealTokyo in 2027 November, now it has got a new name HealIndya and I’m going to start my dream project literate and healthy India. My goal to make India totally literate will start soon with HealIndya.

At the same time I’m working on mental health.I wanna make people aware of their potential and empower them, give them that key to be happy through self rejuvenating sessions and complete the dream of swasth aur Shiksha se sampurn Bharat ( Literate and healthy India). And slowly the world because Vasudeva kutumbakam, the world is a family.❤