Shivananda Salgame of Vita Beans. Photo: Danny Askew, Unreasonable Media
“Train a teacher and you will transform the lives of hundreds of students.” This belief has led Unreasonable at Sea company Vita Beans to create a gamified teaching, teacher training & open certification platform called Guru-G. Shivananda Salgame from Vita Beans shares the beginning of his Unreasonable at Sea experience.
Along with my colleagues, Amruth Ravindranath and Anand Joshi (AJ), we began the Unreasonable at Sea journey of our company Vita Beans after many weeks of excitement and anticipation.
Our first date with uncertainty came up when we had to stand in front of over 400+ Semester at Sea students and tell them what we do and what we want from them in only 6 minutes, Pecha Kucha style.
All the tools learnt over the last week on the ship helped us do it effectively and with confidence. It was true not just for us but for all the other entrepreneurs as well, without exception. I got to feel “the power of collective learning” when I could see the impact the workshops had on their pitches that night.
We begin each morning of our voyage with workshops facilitated George Kembel (Stanford’s d.school) and Daniel Epstein (Unreasonable Institute). These workshops have already brought to Vita Beans an element of freshness to what we do and the way we do it. There is tremendous opportunity to incorporate all of these learning into our work.
Shivananda and the Vita Beans team meeting with the Learning Partners – Photo by Danny Askew, Unreasonable Media
Our visit to the University of Hawaii was our first opportunity to experiment and use some of the tools we learnt in the workshops on the ship – such as rapid ideation and prototyping. We got to meet with a small team of enthusiastic locals from Hilo who were very excited about our project and who were keen to contribute meaningful local insights and suggest how we could get started in the Hawaiian market.These people we did not know an hour ago were already keen to explore possible engagements to help us get activated at Hilo-Hawaii.
We have learned we need to be a bit fearless and open to experimentation, and enter these experiences with a willingness to accept feedback and inputs.
Shivananda and the Vita Beans team during one of the morning workshops – Photo by Danny Askew, Unreasonable Media
Life on the ship on a personal level has been an opportunity to discover myself and learn from everyone around me.
I am personally learning to be more comfortable with shedding my inhibitions and demonstrating an openness to experiment. Evenings with fellow entrepreneurs both on the ship and on port has helped us bond well and trust each other, and helped me be more comfortable with openness.
For the last 10 days it has been a great experience with everybody around and with so much action. Bonding with the fellow entrepreneurs and learning each of their story has been a humbling process. All of us come with excitement, purpose, direction, vulnerability, a deep passion for what we do and followed by hunger to conquer – the opportunity, the attention and the success.
ABOUT VITA BEANS:
While all studies agree that teachers are the most important component of any education system, we are facing a global shortage of 8 million teachers. The only way to truly democratize education is to democratize access to quality teachers. Train a teacher and you will transform the lives of hundreds of students. This belief has led Vita Beans to create a gamified teaching, teacher training & open certification platform called Guru-G. At the heart of the solution is a simple and powerful pedagogy that is embedded within an engaging environment that enables easy and intuitive adoption by teachers, schools, and governments.