Founder of Janwaar Castle and The Rural Changemakers. Digital nomand. Freesoul.
Since 5 years I am now in Janwaar. I only saw little Sachin running around like this: He was always wearing something around his head to protect the open wounds from dirt, he had pain and was restricted in his movements. One day I asked Vicky Roy, a Delhi-based photographer who frequently came to Janwaar, […]
Gaëtan Depecker, a social work student from Belgium, HoGent, asked us to answer a few questions on skateboarding and social change in India. He is doing a little research about how skateboarding can promote gender equality for his bachelor thesis. He wanted answers from the organisation itself and from one of our skateboarders. Anil took […]
Two weeks ago I went to Art Ichol to drop a catalogue for a friend of mine. I always enjoy the 2.5 hours ride from Madla to Maihir, it’s beautiful landscape and only a few cars are on the road. The motorbike knows its way, so the ride is almost like a meditation session for […]
At our Villa Janwaar we had books right from the beginning. Mainly picture books for the little ones. Hindi, English and bilingual. The little kids, even though, they cannot read, love the books. More often than not I see them in the Villa sitting and flipping through them. Yesterday we got book shelves for all […]
Instead of sending out emails – as we did earlier – we’ve now created a newsletter. We call it Out-Of-The-Box! It will provide you out-of-the-box news from Janwaar and our rural changemakers. It’s more like quick shots, not as deep and profound as our newspaper and book. It’s a way for us to say thank […]
Kyra is a teenage girl in Mumbai who really cares a lot about those who are not as fortunate as her. A few years ago she started collection books from friends & family and passing them on to kids in the slums of Mumbai. I’ve met her a few months ago in Mumbai and we […]
On July 27, 2019 I conducted a design thinking workshop at Prakriti School in Noida. Prakriti is our partner and supporter of the Open School Project. So naturally our kids were part of the workshop. Not only did they participate in the sessions, they also facilitated two sessions. Important sessions actually. Sessions that kept the […]
Last week the kids who are in Delhi for our Open School Project – Asha, Arun and Ajeet – went to Decathlon Noida to pick up some new skateboards and decks! When they reached the skateboarding section at the store they were completely surprised to see “their” story in pictures surrounding the mini space they […]
We are currently sailing through some stormy waters with our Open School Experiment – not that we didn’t expect any kind of ups and downs, but the ones we are now struggling with could have been easily avoided. Now looking back it’s easy to say – as always 🙂 In my humble opinion it was […]
For our new skatepark in Janwaar we’ve build a couple of walls to protect the area from floods during the monsoons. Now after the first rains we see, the work was well done. Lucky us 🙂 Over the last two weeks we started with some “detail” work to make the surrounding area look nice. We’ve […]