Sprint 7, floods and fire, careers that change the planet (#9)

This Monday, at our usual sprint planning call, we moved to sprint 7. 

I looked at sprint 7 and scrolled down casually...and down and down and then some…you get my drift. 

Sprint 7 is rather long!

I almost put my head in my hands but I look over at Samisa, Rukmal and Dee and just shrug. 'We can do this' is the unspoken phrase in our eyes as we meet each other’s gazes and then we go back to scrolling. 

Sprint 7 is indeed a long one, but we have reprioritised and made things work this week. Actually, more than just work! 

This week has been a week of fire! But don't worry - the good kind of fire. I don’t think I've used fire in the good sense in awhile. Fire related phrases have been used with fire-fighting and burnt out in my vocabulary over the last few years. This time it’s that fire that burns inside you and ignites and reignites your passion to make a difference in the world!


Though it was a week of fire…’good fire’… it did start with some flooding ;)


Sorry, I must start with a personal anecdote as usual but I promise to get to Avinya soon…but this is related…well kind of…


Saturday morning, I wake up before everyone else in my house to enjoy my peaceful cup of coffee and walk into my kitchen. 

‘Splish, splash, splosh” - right out of an Enid Blyton book I am wading through an inch of water in my kitchen!

I won’t bore you with the details, but I made it through and had my coffee in the end, though two hours later than scheduled. 


What helped me?

Not a mop. 

Well, not my mop anyway. 

We aren’t on the best of terms at the moment after this massive let down. 

What did help me? 

It was a trusty, absorbent towel in the end! (Who knew right!)


Which brings me to point no 1 this week, don’t try mopping up a mini-flood with a mop. 


Desperate times calls for trusty, absorbent towels or rather out of the box thinking.


Point no 2 started with a question from my daughter as she tiptoed past me in wonder as I was just hauling out the last bucket of water and stared at me eyes open in wonder. She needed to be filled in on my morning of adventure. Her first question after hearing my story - “Wow! Did you panic?”

I think about that interesting question, did I? 

Actually no. 

I guess…

I did have a moment of despair when Mr. Mop gave up on me but then I had that lightbulb moment and trusty Ms. Towel swooped in. Where am I going with this? When things get overwhelming and feel like something isn’t working, maybe there’s another way?


And that’s what we’ve done as a team this week with a whole long list of sprint 7 and when things looked large and looming, we thought to ourselves, maybe there’s another way….


So, apart from thinking out of the box and looming long lists, we’ve also got exciting news this week to share :)


Warm welcomes!

  • The first five of our eight pioneer Educators are officially on board! A warm welcome to Ilma, Vidushi, Isuru, Sinalie and Jayani! Dee has been a busy bee making sure their first week with us has been both memorable and full of productive fun!
  • Another warm welcome to Lakshman who will drive the outreach programme for our potential parents and students. We are so excited to be able to share this news with you!

Admissions system


I have promised to not blog about a lot of the fun coding stuff (my coding jokes need some work clearly ;) but Samisa and Rukmal have made several breakthroughs this week and Samisa even gave me a sneak peak into his coding world. Primarily because I sat next to him and peeped over his shoulder at the masses of code that flew across his screen wishing I could press buttons and do the same. 


The team also got together to map out our awareness building and outreach plan. There were whiteboards strewn with flowcharts, content and funnels. Samisa pulled out his marketing 101 class for us on Thursday and then Lakshman and our fabulous educator team took it to the next level of planning with a brilliant range of ideas. We can’t wait to share all this with you soon. Watch this space!


Classroom deep dive


We got down on the floor this week literally, to do a deep dive into what our classrooms need to look like and who better to lead the discussion than our fabulous team of educators. 


Then the whole team got together and we even had makeshift classrooms with people acting as human walls and doors to figure out what would be both practical and realistic in the space we have imagined. 

They got out post its, apps to measure lengths, width and I even shocked some of the nice people down in the lunch room when I went down to take photos of tables and chairs. Hopefully they read this and understand I’m not just the crazy lady taking random pictures of tables and chairs in my free time.


And finally, Sanjiva shared a very interesting article with our discussion community at the start of this week. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/03/want-career-saving-planet-become-an-electrician 


Interesting right? Very poignant. 

If you want to save the planet… we need more electricians…in a class of 40, how many would voluntarily, excitedly, passionately choose this as a career?



I won’t spell out the answer but it shows us that it’s time to be the change - change perceptions and upskill our youth to trailblaze in these vocational occupations!


Here’s me signing off…until next week…when our amazing educator team will be taking over the weekly blog post :)


I look forward to that fun read!

In the meantime, hope you enjoy some picture highlights from this week below :)

- Anju










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