Hotdogs, Epicenters and Versatility

“If you're opening a hot dog stand, you could worry about the condiments, the cart, the name, the decoration. But the first thing you should worry about is the hot dog. The hot dogs are the epicenter. Everything else is secondary.” Jason Fried


What am I on about you may wonder? Since when does Avinya focus on hotdogs? 

Do not be alarmed, we haven’t shifted focus to be the best fast food chain in Sri Lanka :)


Our hotdogs are our students and they are definitely the epicenter of everything. That's been a theme this week.


It is important to constantly remind ourselves of this. In anything we do, what is our epicenter and why are we doing what we are doing? If it does not make sense to our epicenter, then we shouldn’t really be doing it! It’s that simple.


Other than me thinking about hotdogs :) we rode into this week on the crest of a wave - a wave full of press releases, admissions and social media hype! We were so excited that we were finally able to share with you the location of our very first Avinya Academy and our partnership with the Sarvodaya Institute of Higher Learning to make our first school a reality!


In case you missed our announcement blog post, do check it out here: https://medium.com/@sanjiva.weerawarana/announcing-the-avinya-academy-in-bandaragama-bbae2cd4360c


We are live!


Our admissions system is live and waiting to filled in by fresh, keen minds of the future who want to journey with us on a unique vocational learning journey. If you know anyone in the area of Avinya Academy Bandaragama, who would like to join us, please do share our admissions link with them: https://avinyafoundation.org/avinya-academy/admissions/


Interiors


It was very exciting to discuss the interior of our unique school building this week. We had the pleasure of listening to all the great interior detailing being worked on and the building is beginning to look almost like a fancy eco villa rather than a school!  

I am sure our students will enjoy the unique student journey they will be experiencing within its beautiful and stunning….I wanted to say walls…but walls aren’t really a stand out feature in our design. Within its distinctly absent walls... to give us all the sense of belonging to the surroundings of the school and appreciate nature and all its beauty to the fullest.


After all, a good building helps you appreciate the really beautiful architecture of nature doesn’t it?


Curriculum


Remember hotdogs? So, ensuring our curriculum for the Empower program meets our students needs is very important to us and we’ve been spending a lot of time working on fine tuning the framework as well as the unique, exciting projects the students will be exploring on the course.


We really want to ensure our epicenter, i.e. our students have the best learning experience possible with us. It is really important to us all that they make the maximum benefit of our unique learning journey.


The projects are slowly taking shape and we have a buzz of discussion happening in the Educator team with Dee each day as the building blocks slowly come together. 





A lot of work is revolving around our customized program to enrich our students with 21st Century skills. Check out our website for more information on our unique program: https://avinyafoundation.org/avinya-academy/empower-program/ 


Timetabling


We are on version 6 now :) We like to keep things dynamic at Avinya! You may wonder why… I think it is one of the most critical things we need to get right, so the more times we look at it, rethink it and go back to the drawing board to redo it means we are taking our time to create the best possible version for our hotdogs, sorry our students ;)


Welcome


A long overdue welcome to Kosala who joins our awesome team as DevOps! 



Potatoes


Finally, potatoes! What’s a hotdog without a side of double fried fries huh? Samisa’s words of wisdom this week have been ‘There’s a potato for every occasion’. Which translates to the importance of versatility and that is the very foundation of Avinya and how we work together in a nutshell! Through this we have come so far so here's to hotdogs and potatoes! 

Onwards on our journey to ensuring our epicenters have all the ingredients of a true masterpiece!


- Anju

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