Our Values
What is valuable to us?
We inculcate thoughts that stitch our family together and carry us forward. We know the values that gives us direction and so we’ve written down some of them to share with you, for you to know us better.
Honesty
For us honesty is not just about speaking the truth, it is also about being honest to ourselves. Having an open dialogue with the people that surround us is the only way that we can be sure that our minds are not restricted in any manner, leaving room for happy thoughts and receptiveness to learning from the world. If we feel we are wrong, we apologise. Be it a teacher or a child. Nobody is too grown or too young to say sorry. We value the honesty we are given and we give it back. Our children observe, learn and practice this and we can see the sense of safety that brings to them.
Love and Compassion
We want our young to grow through life with a sensitivity and love that creates compassion. Many of our teachers are teaching at Udaan today because when they wanted to learn, they found a kind heart who taught them expecting nothing in return. Doesn’t that show the ripple effect that a small act of selflessness has? Children who have experienced that support go on to try and pay it forward wherever they can. We also make it a point to teach our children the importance of taking their health seriously. The willingness to help one another is what fills Udaan’s soul. We celebrate our lives! Together we pay attention to and enjoy the little things. Birthdays, for example, are celebrated as a group on a monthly basis. A sense of belonging, acceptance and union goes a long way for all of us.
Equality and Respect
Treating one another without bias is important. If one of our teachers fails to attend a class without a reason, his name will be taken off the register just like it would be for another child studying in that class! If we are fair in the way we regard one another, it teaches our children to think the same way. We respect each other’s time and views and refrain from forming opinions before trying to understand another person. We also talk to our children with respect and we value the input they give during our interactions. We hope to influence our children to one day become leaders who tend to those who are often forgotten, remembering that everyone deserves the same respect.
Listening with Curiosity
We encourage the idea of listening to one another with curiosity and absorbing new things. This opens up children to new thoughts and ideas that could stir up their creativity. During our annual day celebrations, we leave it to the children to handle affairs. They learn this way to think creatively, they find many different approaches to working with limited resources and they do a great job. We try to inculcate activities that help them to think out of the box, pushing boundaries to find creative solutions. An emphasis is given to having a listening ear that helps this process along.
Humour and Having Fun
What is life without some laughs! We love to seek out humour in our daily lives and activities that we do together. It breeds creativity and creates an environment that children and young adults feel secure to be themselves in. Encouraging each other this way is important. We also ensure that everyone knows the difference between respectful and disrespectful jokes. Enjoying learning and coming up with solutions requires some fun and adventure and being able to express ourselves in different ways is what enables that.
Growth and Learning
There is never an end to what we can learn at any stage in our journey. This is a concept that we want to absorb into our attitudes as we work together. Often, we think that our learning is over once we have completed a course or finished a chapter. At Udaan, this thought is erased! Our teachers talk of how they learn every day, they learn more about their areas of expertise on an ongoing basis and we want our children to also keep this openness in their minds.
Responsibility
To understand the effects of our actions is vital. A lot of children do not initially realise this, or simply do not know how to think in this way. They need to know the value of another person’s time, thereby the importance of punctuality. They need to know the importance of good presentation and so we do not accept enrolment forms that are not tidy. They need to know how to make commitments and stand by them. Therefore even though classes are free, they pay a small fine for skipping class without reason. They are taught to think about how the little things they do can impact others and how to have discipline over the way they go about their responsibilities. This is a life skill that will be of great help in the future. Every rule that is set at Udaan has an underlying value that we aim to help the children imbibe and apply in their lives.