Mannan on Mannan (& 2025)
Mannan means contemplation & it would remiss to wrap up this calendar year without a reflection. In this note, we reflect on our efforts for changing mindset about education & sustainability.
In 2024, we witnessed the outstanding performance of our learners at IGCSE, competitive sports, produced two musical theatre performances and received accolades at fora such as DIDAC India, Education World and UNESCO Green Schools Conference at New York. Finally, came Mannan, our celebration of community, enterprise and sustainability.
What makes Mannan special is that neither it is a culmination of efforts nor is it a show of achievements. Instead, Mannan is an effort in building collective consciousness towards thinking about impact of our actions on the community, whether it is about planning for the products to be sold or the waste we generate or how we build our relationship with money.
If we just do a check on attendees’ feelings after the event, a record turnout at a community event, 15 partners with home-grown but well-known brands, 30+ google reviews of 5-star ratings on the school’s efforts overall (thank you, parents) and a beaming student community on their successful enterprises for the day, it would appear that we have met our goal. However, there’s miles to go before we consider it done!
Wake-up Call for Awareness and Action
On the day of the event, our learners conducted a survey of the knowledge about the environmental impact of consumer decisions and the habits of eco- friendly consumption of our visitors.
What we understood from the charts isn’t impressive:
Respondents’ perception of their own lifestyle being sustainable was mid-range, at 3 on a scale of 1-5; Knowledge needs remediation as most of the respondents thought that paper was bio-degradable!
Most people mentioned that buying “greener alternatives” was rather inconvenient, besides being costlier and many a times obscure;
Hardly 2-3 visitors used public transportation or car-pooled to come to Mannan
Clearly, there’s a lot of work required in creating awareness and taking the right steps.
Encourage Micro-enterprises through Buying
In places where the community comes together for a single objective of promoting sustainability, the micro-enterprises in the system need whole-hearted support through spending. We would really like to see all our parents, visitors from the extended parent community and the facilitators buy those eco-friendly products rather than the mainstream ones so that green-focused micro-enterprise economy get the much deserved fillip. Let’s support our partners who have undertaken the tough journey of enterprise and that too in the sustainability space.
Successes and Learning of Our Young Entrepreneurs
Our learners, some of them just seven-year old, proved their business acumen by resourcing, seeking their parents’ help in managing logistics and selling aggressively. Many stalls had a unique selling proposition (USP) linked to sustainability, such as home-made chemical-free liquid soaps, crochet -based and clay-based jewelry, art from pine cones, upcycled clothes and reused paper flowers.
Need for Pre-empting the Competition
Many of you might have been hounded by our learners selling lime juice, cup cakes, kesar milk, artistic post cards and crochet earrings on the field. We feel Price, Place and Promotion worked for them but did Product? Some of us forgot the importance of understanding competition before launching our products, as a result, we saw many selling home-made cookies, cakes and brownies.
There were at least 20 learners’ stalls selling the similar food items as a result, the buyer had the power, not the producers:-). Next time, we would encourage the learners to be more innovative with their product and its positioning (low sugar, gluten free, vegan…or whatever the buzzwords customers are looking for these days).
Selling vs. Gifting
Ever imagined what an expectation-free world would do to our happiness? What if we don’t price our product but asked the customers to “pay as they liked”. What if we didn’t sell to our teachers but gifted them? How about donating a share of our earnings generously to the NGOs and their hardworking volunteers who came and shared their work with us on Mannan? Do you sense the happiness that feeling of making others happy would have provided to you?
Our Glorious Partners
We are grateful to our visitors for visiting and purchasing from 100+ stalls, primarily of our learners, but also of ventures run by our parents such a Eeva Farms, Sundrii, Potli, Donna Pasta, Chakramm and our partners, Sparrows at Home Cafe, Big Little Hood, Ginny’s Planet, Silent Door, Artylogs, Deep Connection, Popsicle Culture, Eco Swoop Solutions, Kaya Palat Consultants, Tedhi Medhi Family, Cake Up, Dadi’s Kitchen as well as NGOs MyPerch, Creativity Adda, Om Foundation and Kritagyata.
We also saw enlightening workshops and talks by Radhika Bhagat (Rediscover Nature), Tarunima Bajpai (Waste Management), Saurabh Arora (Hydrophonic Farming), Charu Puri (Crochet), Ena Gupta (Disease Management), Sushmita (Composting) and Ramveer Tanwar, Pond Man of India on saving our ponds.
Our partners had made their best efforts in their selection of the ingredients, usage of energy and packaging of their materials to ensure that there are no preservatives and minimal waste is produced. Next time, we would like to collaborate with our partners to go completely waste free.
Zero-waste consumption
We are grateful to our parents who heeded our advice and brought their personal utensils to serve food for themselves instead of taking bio-degradable crockery as nothing is entirely carbon-free! However, there was still some waste observed and in the next editions, we would like to go completely waste-free at Mannan, true to its spirit of community efforts. Our next door Christmas celebration had decorated a big ground with thousands of plastic balloons, a practice that we would request community and partners to avoid.
Special Currency
Prakriti’s chip economy is working well, in ensuring that we spend consciously and the learners handle money easily. For partners, the chip currency ensures accountability to the overall success of the festival. We would like to encourage our learners and partners to use the chip economy to move towards a “gift-based culture”. In a place like Mannan, there is no reason to follow any alternate payment methods.
Ushering the New Year with Hope
The new year calls us to embrace action for sustainability, prioritizing affirmative steps over mere ideation and reflection. Let us champion the values of delayed gratification, foster a spirit of community living, and prepare ourselves for opportunities ahead. May 2025 be a greener, more harmonious year for all!
How children surprise us with their ways and possibilities they create. Mannan and it's sustainability philosophy was one such depiction. The budding entrepreneurs with expectant gazes as one stops at each counter and inquires about thier creations/products teaches them not only raw transactions of business but also resilience. It's also about feeling of success after every other, or every fifth or maybe every tenth customer that teaches patience. Reflections on what they must do better next year to up their game (or average) at the constructive risk is preparation for the real life. Powerful observation in the article of how they collectively gave the consumers the buying power vs under similar conditions what they can do collectively to balance the buyer and seller power. Some attempts at marketing across the premises were adorable- whether it was going mobile with the drinks or attempting a hand at auctioning the product. Replacing the wooden chips with plastic tokens another cherry on the cake. Taste of the banana chocochip cake still lingers in my taste buds. And still revel in being a proud owner of a handmade fancy pouch made out of recycled cloth.