Carolina Castro | Head of Creative Initiatives | 2014
SEEKHO (now known as Project Potential) is a launching pad that empowers young local visionaries into acting out community change through the use of existing resources.
What makes Project Potential different from other organizations is their use of innovative training methods grounded on academic research. Its core members are professionals from a variety of fields that bring to Project Potential methodologies and ideas from all over the spectrum.
While on the field I managed to get a first hand glimpse at the malleability of young minds. I taught an afternoon art class and in my first class I guided the young children through the process of creating origami paper cranes. It was difficult. From the start the children had a self-deprecating attitude insisting they were not able to create such beautiful things on their own. Almost at every step one of the students would insist on quitting and would have to be constantly encouraged to continue. The class took over 2 hours to finish. Jump to two months later, we had them paint their own landscapes using their own creativity. By now the students acted on their own, needing only a simple and often abstract directive that inspired them to create their own art pieces. What really astonished me about this particular class is that as some of the students finished their landscapes they started creating the paper cranes they had learned two months before and pasting them all over their painted sky. It was their own idea and they remembered every step of creating the paper cranes even though we hadn’t revisited the exercise in over two months! It was clear that anything these children learned created a lasting impression.
In my film class the progress was less obvious but equally influencing. It was often difficult to measure the level of progress the students were making so we would often have discussion sessions where the students were encouraged to give their opinions on the class and what they had learned. It touched my heart when one of our shy students raised her hand to tell us that she originally had not wanted to take the class but now she was so grateful because she had become self-aware of who she is and she felt her critical thinking had started to develop.
This change came from one of our writing exercises. The students were given pocket-size notebooks and were told to write every day. It wasn’t a diary, it was a notebook of emotions and details: descriptions of why and when they felt extreme emotions of sadness, happiness, excitement, etc; interesting conversations they had or overhead written in a dialogue style; dreams they had overnight; even a funny joke they might have heard. The idea was to get them to start living life critically, to awaken them to really notice their surroundings and themselves. The change was evident in the evolution and progress of their writing. At first the writings were diary style overall statements on their day but after just a few days the journals grew in detail and incorporated their real interior personalities.
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2018
Even three years later, I still find myself processing and understanding the lessons I was taught from working and living at Project Potential, then called SEEKHO. And the main lesson was just about that, the inner potential that is latent in all of us, ready to develop if given the time and care. Working with Zubin and the team, I learned how to connect with people as people and not only within the realities that we both had lived in the past or the projects that we needed to fulfill in the present. It was about the individual and their place within the greater whole. And that’s the thing, when we connect genuinely we do more than just fulfill our immediate goals, we leave a long lasting feeling of nurture that can continue shaping us and feeding our potential.
I still find myself saying things like “when I lived in India“ because that’s how it feels, even three years later it still feels so present. I will never think of community in the same way, because I was able to truly see how someone can shape themselves for personal reasons but they can also decide to embark on a path to shape their families and their communities, a power that is a lot stronger than simply moving ourselves into our own individual paths. It’s impossible to describe the strength and the power this organization has and will continue having, I can certainly feel it in my personal life. All I can say is that it’s a journey that has a real end because it’s a journey that seeks true human fulfillment, true human wellbeing, and that is something that is not only attainable but also necessary for everyone. And Project Potential is moving and it’s giving people the ability to fully realize who they are, a realization that comes not only from those who take part on the programs but especially for those to partake in creating them. I can only be absolutely indebted and grateful to have had this opportunity to teach and to learn.
