Half a Century!!!

I can't believe I touched the 50th Post and this one happens to be a special one! All credits of this post to Rai as my thoughts have been reflected in his writing.

What a day it turned out to be...!!If there was any doubt in anyone's mind about commitment and passion towards the Sattva dream, then Saturday would have driven away all those doubts. The Sattva offsite which we had on Saturday was all about self-realization, realizing each-other and of course realizing equilibrium in social change..!!! It was a wonderful opportunity where we could connect names and emailIDs to faces, a day when we saw the Sattva team and its strength.

For those who missed out and who are away, am attempting to recount the action we had through the day. This will be a bit long, but i promise if you are any bit Sattva, it will be damn interesting...!!

Participants - Rathish, Aarti, Sumithra, Yenne, Satish, Bala, Goli, Kishore, Deepak, Upesh, Angie, Guneet, Rai, Vishal, Madhu.

8.30AM-9.25AM - Assembled in front of Dream a Dream office. Usual share of on-timers and late comers.

10.15am - Reached Jyothir Bhawan to find Vishal and Madhu(co-facilitator) looking all angry at our late entry :-)

10.30AM - Walked across the room for about 10 minutes with some lounge music playing in the background. Point was to feel integrated with our surroundings. Then played a group activity where each person had to establish eye contact with every other person in the group for a while.

10.45AM - 11.30AM - Sattva and I - Every person had to pick 2 things from the surroundings. One which describes your self and one which describes Sattva. Lots of interesting things/analogies came out. Water, soil, flowers, butterfly, crow, leaves, tree, tender coconuts(most popular) etc.Madhu was patiently jotting down the interesting findings on the white-board. What finally resulted was this - Me and Sattva

11.30AM-1.30PM - Appreciative Enquiry - Each person picked another member whom they least knew about. Each pair then gets to know the positives of each other through 2 questions - One most memorable and unique learning experience and some experience with Sattva which you think played an important role. Once this paired interviewing was over, the pairs formed 2 large groups. Within each group, we introduced our partners and came up with a common set of themes which describe us vis-a-vis sattva. Each group then presented these themes to the rest and finally we tried to pick out and arrive at common themes which run across us with respect to sattva. Finally we had - Appreciative Enquiry Results

1.30PM-2.30-PM - Lunch. Goli had baked a yummy cake for all of us..!! He is looking out for potential partners to start a baking business. I believe we have quiet some number of experts within Sattva now. Over lunch we had to get to know another person whom we knew little about. Questions to get details about included - what are the things which drives the person with work/activities/passions, one dream which the person wants to fulfill and one thing about the person which no one knows.

2.30-3.00PM - We discussed the new found things about our partners. Very interesting revelations ranging from aarti's sleep-walking to a phone-booth when in the US to a certain TV-star Sattva member having dated a current bollywood actress came out..!!

3.00-3.30PM - Presentation of Sattva Vision/Goals/Organization structure by me

3.30-4.00PM - Game time again. 3 teams, 3 cups, 3 sets of candies. 2 teams cheated. 1 team(me,rathish,bala,kishore,goli) won the fair play award :-)

4.00PM-5.30PM - Presentation of annual plans. Rathish -editorial; Yenne - marketing and distribution; Rai - operations/technology.

5.30PM-6.00PM - Wrap up. A very nice group activity where a golden thread ball was passed on from one person to another. Each person had to spell out one key take-away from the day and one commitment made to sattva, holding back the thread end while passing. What resulted was a beautiful golden mesh

6.00PM-6.30PM - Mementos presented to all participants. A copy of the book "How to change the world". Vishal was presented with the first print copy of the anniversary issue

6.30PM - Headed back citywards. Few of us downed some celebratory beers at Legends of Rock..!!

All in all a day of total fun, enjoyment, bonding and looking at the bright days ahead. Thanks to Vishal and Madhu for making the day so interesting, exciting and thought-provoking.

All snaps can be viewed at - http://picasaweb.google.com/vikram.rai/SattvaOffsite?authkey=9V7xNhLZj-E

Courtesy - Vikram Rai!