Admissions, Recipe 120 and Forging ahead (#11)

This week, I have been tasked with the tall order of following on from the fantastic blog from our amazing educator team... I shall try to keep up! 

It’s been another wonderful week of incredible work. If you looked through the windows you would’ve seen so much of activity that it would have made your head spin. I went home on Tuesday and thought it was Friday, you get my drift :) 

I think we have learnt how to elongate hours of the day now as our ambitious deadlines loom. I’m pretty sure Samisa has a secret weapon or has an AI bot that does this for him. Or an AI bot that allows him to sleep and work at the same time. I’m not sure which one… :)

If I could sum up this week in one quote it would be this:

“I’ve learned over decades of building that a deadline is a potent tool for problem-solving.” (Adam Savage)

That’s what happens doesn’t it? Deadlines loom, problems come out of the woodwork and then you put the amazing heads of your brilliant team together and voilà! A whole lot of ‘out of the box thinking’ emerges! Dee's ideas come out visually and Rukmal's in mathematical equations :) 

The biggest problem that has been brewing in our minds and is now at the forefront - how do you get 120 students enrolled at our first Avinya Academy within our ambitious deadlines?

I thought about this and I suppose the answer is like a recipe of sorts…

I must confess in the rare occasions that I have free time, I enjoy making my own food. I’m a wing it, combine it and random fusion kind of amateur cook. Which is why I think there is never a straightforward answer to one problem or more than one way to come up with your perfect recipe :)

So, what’s the recipe to start admissions and enrol your first group of 120 students?

First you come up with a comms strategy.

Then you cut, dice and chop. 

Remember there are many chefs in our kitchen of admissions.

Unlike the ‘too many cooks who spoiled the soup’, in our kitchen of admissions we have many chefs coming in from different angles with their unique expertise. 

So you discuss and debate until you can find that right equilibrium of ideas.

Then, together we balance the flavours so that the soup or recipe appeals to all. (Coincidentally, I’ve been under the weather this week and soup has been a good friend!)

Back to soup, sorry Admissions.

Next, you weigh your comms strategy and see if you’ve got the right amounts of the different ingredients. 

Have you considered all of your target audience? I mean yes we need the students in the location of our first Avinya Academy but then we also need to talk to parents, the general public as well as people who would like to donate or contribute to Avinya. Have we considered all that? Do we have the right messaging and comms put together? Lakshman has been spending a lot of time thinking this through and has had many early morning epiphanies which I've had the pleasure of being privy to. The creative juices are flowing :)

As an additional step you then break it all down and see what parts make up the whole. 

Finally...

Who am I kidding…we can’t get to ‘finally’ and tie this up with a nice bow yet. 

There’s lots more to do but that’s where we are. 

If all goes well, we start our social media awareness by end this week and we will go live with admissions next week.

So, apart from admissions coding strewn across screens, we had a lot more balls up in the air this week. We had lots of timetabling, costing, school set up and policy discussions going on as well. Documents with diagrams, GitHub issues and slide decks are cooking and simmering away on the stove until they get to the right temperature to serve :)

That’s not all! 

For the main course we also welcomed the three Educators we have been waiting for to complete our team of eight pioneer Educators: Dilani, Vihan and Sanduni! A warm welcome to you!

We also welcomed Nihara as our Head of Operations. Exciting stuff is brewing as we go full steam ahead!

Mrs. Fernando, our co-founder and advisory board member started off the training for November with a wonderful session on the history of language. It was a highlight for our team of educators!

Can anyone believe that we have now started off the penultimate month of 2022? 

Where did 2022 go? 

We must do a write up reflecting on the entirety of 2022, but that’s a separate blog!

It’s been a ‘massive’ year for lack of a better word and for many reasons, not to mention a very special year for Avinya! Thambili wine anyone? (Figured that is more apt to celebrate with than Champagne don’t you think ;)) Pair it with some woodapple achcharu and reminisce the good old days…

But wait! We have more things to celebrate…

On Monday 31 October (no connection to Halloween), construction work started at the site of our first Avinya Academy. It was a great milestone and a very proud moment for the Avinya team!

To end the week, the whole team is off on a road trip to watch the construction first hand on Friday!

That’s it from me this week.

Here’s to some new recipes next week!

- Anju