Mumbai: In his cycling helmet, T-shirt and shorts, Zachary Coffin looks every bit the wayfarer. On a muggy afternoon, the actor wears another hat to a school in Dahisar, where he has to address 30 Class IX children who can’t wait for the session to begin. Mr. Coffin is a little late, as he struggles to fit his bicycle into the school lift.
Wiping the sweat off his brow every few minutes, he asks the class to tell him seven good things about cycling, which they readily do. “The country I’m from cycles more than ever, even though it invented the car,” he tells them. “I’m from a place called Los Angeles, in California. LA County has more cars than 180 countries around the world. In India, I see people going from bicycles to scooters to motorcycles to cars. In my country, we did that but are going back to bicycles because of this list,” he says, pointing to the adjectives the children have come up with.
He proceeds to tell them about the ‘melting pot’ in America, and the ‘khichdi’ here. “Nobody in America is one race. I’m a quarter Russian, three-eights Scottish, one-eighth English, one-fourth Spanish and a little American,” he tells the intrigued children. “When you get people from all over, new things happen. The thing that makes America strong is its ability to take the best and brightest ideas, and you have it here in Mumbai too.”
The khichdi is the starter; at the end of the hour-long session, the children get a lot more food for thought. \
Mr. Coffin’s session is part of many such interactions that Clap Global, organises in schools to bridge the gap between India and the rest of the world. Founders Arti Chhabria and Shirin Johri spent their 20s travelling the world, and discovered how unfounded their biases against Westerners were.
They attributed it to the lack of communication with foreigners at a young age. For most Indians, international travel is a luxury, and they decided that if the student cannot see the world, then the world must be brought to them.
“Clap is about bringing two things together to create a wonderful sound” says Ms. Chhabria. “It’s bringing the world of education and travel together so that students can learn something meaningful. We want to teach kids to grow up thinking that the world is one place and work towards building a more passionate and understanding environment.”
Direct interaction
As part of ‘Clap Talk’, foreign travellers in India speak to students here about their home country, its culture and customs, politics and other topics. “There’s a gap in exchange programmes and interacting online, and that’s where [Clap Talk] comes in,” says Ms. Chhabria. The talk is structured into five parts: the traveller begins with an introduction and briefly presents on their country, followed by a question-and-answer session with the students, after which the children write personal notes to the traveller and get photographs taken with them. After the session, students write down their thoughts in a personalised ‘reflection journal.’
A Clap Talk follows a prescribed curriculum, created in consultation with psychologists, counsellors and educational consultants. A single talk costs ₹250 per student, which includes stationery. If a school signs up for a package — six talks spread over an academic year — then the cost per student is down to Rs. 175.
The company markets itself to travellers by tying up with organisations such as Rotary and AIESEC, while improving its presence at concerts and within expatriate communities. Additionally, they are reaching out to younger travellers by promoting themselves in hostels and on websites such as couchsurfing.com. Ms. Chhabria also reaches out to schools through various business contacts accumulated over the years.
The traveller is vetted thoroughly, and Clap Global makes sure her oratory skills are good for the age group she will address. The travellers’ effort is voluntary; “To talk to children for one-and-a-half-hours when you’re here to travel; that in itself is a form of vetting,” says Ms. Chhabria.
Challenges
Starting out, they had difficulty getting teachers to understand what they wanted to do, says Ms. Chhabria. Getting their first school group to sign up wasn’t easy. Neither was achieving their first milestone of 1,000 customers; today, the company has 17,000.
Clap Talks have already been conducted in a government-run, partly-aided school in Mumbai, a tribal school in Panchgani, a school in Pune, and there are plans to go to Mohali, Jodhpur and Delhi soon. For the next academic year, there are 3,000 Clap Talks planned across the city, and tie-ups with Teach for India and the Salaam Baalak Trust.
“We also want to go to the interiors of Maharashtra ,” says Ms. Chhabria. “By this December, our goal is to launch in eight cities in India.” The website is being expanded to accommodate at least 5,000 travellers.
The company is working towards a partnership with the State Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship to incorporate the Clap programme into school curricula. In an effort to widen their services, the company is planning on offering homestays for travellers, and is thinking of a Clap fellowship, wherein a traveller would spend a month touring the country, giving Clap Talks in different schools.
Schools in Spain, Poland, Argentina and Singapore have shown interest, and the team has done experiments in Santiago, Chile. “We found it was a good way to bring in experiential learning, a global perspective and in the process, teach English to students,” says Ms. Chhabria.
The real impact
The learning is both ways. Indian kids, says Mr. Coffin, have a “wonderful openness to wanting to learn from other cultures.” But some of the children’s responses woudn up giving him new perspectives on the country he’s lived in for seven years
Towards the end of his talk, he asked the students, “What would you like to change about your country?” The answers ranged from pollution, corruption, poverty, to racism, rule-breaking, and education.
One child stood up and said, “Change history. Before the British came, we were all happy. They took our riches.” Another child was more emphatic. “Bring back the Kohinoor.”
For a moment, there was stunned silence in the classroom. Mr. Coffin asked the children, “Will it change other things, like pollution?” The children held on to their position. “Control the British like they controlled us”; “Teach them a lesson.” Mr. Coffin responded with a lesson in the dynamics of control. “It’s in the DNA of America,” he explained, “to solve problems by force and power. Did you know there are more guns in America than people? America has the power to destroy the world, but what does it get with this power?”
Mr. Coffin had his own takeaway. “It’s a good thing he (the child, a Sikh) didn’t say it should go back to Punjab. When he was saying ‘we’, he was saying ‘we as Indians’. So you can look at it and say, ‘Just getting a couple of diamonds back is not going to change India’s real problems’. On the other hand, he is speaking as an Indian, and not as a regional Punjabi or Sikh.”
