Snap shot of Ashoka U Exchange 2018: Day 2 and 3

By now, you must have read about my first day at Ashoka U Exchange 2018.

This blog is the extension of my first blog entry and will reflect on Day 2 and Day 3 of Ashoka U Exchange 2018.

Day 2 started with the Changemaker Campus Designation Ceremony where 9 universities were awarded Ashoka U Changemaker Campus. It was followed by four keynote speakers who were Fagan Harris, Sarah Hemminger, Imran Khan and Casey Woods and who discussed ‘Is Empathy Dead?’.

Speakers shared:

Session 1: Is Empathy Dead?

Imran Khan shared a story of a high school where he taught, where 29 students were shot. After this incident the students of the school did not go out of their community which caused social isolation in students and many did not even go out of their home. So Imran took the students out and felt their behaviour was changing. The main take away is recognising heroic acts are everywhere.

Sarah Hemminger discussed about building community and family with strangers for mental health, diversity and cross collectiveness and gave a reflection of her attachment to a friend of her.

Fagan Harris highlighted not to fall in love with the solution but find a problem to solve.

Casey Woods spoke on learning to agree on what we disagree.

Session 2: Breakout sessions:

In the first break out session I went to the workshop’ Moving beyond Theory & Passion: Teaching the skills social entrepreneurs are missing’. The speakers of this sessions were Cathy Clark, Jay Friedlander, Kathleen Janus and Anke Wessels.

Some highlights from the session:

Kathleen Janus said it is good to learn from an established organisation before building one. She also added testing innovation, measuring impact, fund-raising and storytelling are powerful tools for social enterprises.

Cathy Clark explained about SCALING IMPACT and debt financing tools. She also discussed the importance of long-term sustainable fund and relationship of corporation with CSR.

Anke Wessels discussed the importance of system change for social impact and mind mapping in students.

The sessions ended with Jay Friedlander’s highlights of about Hatchery, an online educational course about social entrepreneurship.

Session 3: Diagnosis to the Resisting to Change Syndrome:

This workshop was one of my best workshops that I attended. It focused on following questions:

1. How to deal with change?
2. How is change affecting you?
3. How to identify people who resist change?

Dida and Kendal K. Whitlock were two facilitators who said that we humans were living in exponential times where the speed of change is affecting our lives and we need to embody the change through new mindsets and by valuing innovation. It was an interactive session with wonderful exercises for the attendees.

Day 2 ended all well. The attendees were awestruck by the content delivery and interactive sessions in the workshops. During the dinner after long hours of knowledge building sessions, the attendees were sharing their highlights of the sessions they had attended and I would feel like I should have attended other sessions too however, I would not want to miss the session I had been to as well. It was really good to hear change makers speak about their journey or workshops where they demonstrated on how to become one.

The final day of Ashoka U Exchange started with breakout sessions where I attended Change making Design Studio.

Final Session: Change making Design Studio:

Changemaking Design Studio focused on Meaningful Life Design. Speakers discussed the power of storytelling and two types of storytelling such as redemption and contamination. Christopher Michealson discussed performance with purpose and Mira Azarm facilitated a session where participants were grouped in 2 and were asked to exercise self-reflection interview which consisted heart mapping and head mapping and lighting round synthesis and lastly were asked to draft a fearless mission statement.

The final day of the Ashoka U Exchange 2018 ended with a keynote from Aneel Chima. He discussed emotional, psychological, social and contemplative well-being. He concluded by saying that Anchor is the purpose to create meaningful well-being.

After three wonderful and informative conference, I packed my bags to fly back to Melbourne. The whole experience was beyond expectation. It was a great opportunity to network with people from different parts of the world with a similar mindset about becoming a change maker. I still cherish all the knowledge I have gained throughout the conference and I am glad I was part of the wonderful Ashoka U Exchange 2018 and I am thankful for this opportunity given by CQUniversity Australia.

I could write pages about my experience in Boston but I have tried to shrink the length so it is easy to have a quick overview of my experience. If readers have any questions, suggestions or want to talk to me more about this exchange I am happy to share my words and notes.