Our Story
“Be the change you wish to see in the world”
Even if Gandhi did not say it, this just about sums up why we do this.
The Backstory to the story: In the very recent past, for about eight decades now, our habitat and our environment has undergone huge changes mainly on account of human activity. We see climate getting warmer, more natural disasters that can now be attributed to climate change, increased wild fires across the world, the melting of Artic ice and the glacier melting in Greenland. Arctic is getting warmer, many species getting extinct, CO2 concentration increasing, air pollution getting worse, waste increasing manifold, plastic waste reaching oceans in large quantities
These changes have contributed largely to the deterioration of our living environment and ecosystems. Our personal connect with the nature and natural surroundings has been on a downward path.
How can we balance development and at the same time be connected with nature? How can we transform internally to manifest changes externally? How to stop environmental degradation in a manner that is soft and transformational?
While the governments and policy makers work at a macro level to ensure a sustainable environment and a sustainable future, as individuals we need to act too. As many among us continue to work at a personal level to ensure sustainability, we have taken the organisational approach to ensure that personal changes can manifest in a larger ecosystem of like-minded people and organisations.
A group of us, like-minded spirits, therefore started Paper Ball Educational Innovation as a platform to incubate small changes through the simple devices of awareness, action, capacity building, collaboration, education and empowerment.
Our Philosophy & Vision
Our intention is to impact our living environment positively and sustainably through simple actions that ultimately come from inner transformation.
Positively: all our projects and programmes will have a net positive impact on the environment and ecosystems. They shall not impact any ecosystem negatively
Sustainably: all our projects and programmes shall further the sustainability of our environment. Our actions should enhance the overall living environment
Simple actions: Actions that any person can take to enhance the environmental sustainability. For example, no-littering of plastic waste. These actions shall be able to engage the stakeholders on the ground and shall be more efficient and effective for environmental sustainability. Simple actions does not exclude technology or innovations, but does not rely only on technology and highly complex activities.
Paper Ball… signifies simplicity and joy. And simplicity and joy are worth aiming for.
Our Vision:
As a stakeholder in the environment, we envision a living, thriving, clean and sustainable environment that can be gifted forward to the future generations. We intend to achieve this through propagation of environmentally sustainable practices at a personal and community level.
Our Approach:
We believe that many challenges that our world faces today, especially on the environmental sustainability front, have been caused due to lack of holistic focus. We have worked on symptoms for far too long.
We, therefore, intend to work holistically and approach the challenges to environmental sustainability using three inter-related and inter-dependent means that positively feed into each other through a feedback loop, thus making our programmes responsive, dynamic and evolving.
Core Team
Ritesh Gohil
Co-Founder
Ashish Shrivastava
Trustee
Amit Arora
Co-Founder
Mahua Chakravarty
CCE Curriculum Designer
Volunteers
Ravi
Musician at Heart
Apoorva
Architect With A Big Heart
Jil Chhaniara
Policy Research
Trilok Pandya
Repair Community Facilitator
Aakriti
Crotchet Artist
Drishti
Graphic Designer
Shashank Shekhar
Engineer & Nature Enthusiast
Supporters
Sunita Amin
Nature Lover & Architect
Aditya Tripathi
Shodh Yatri
Swara Pandya
Ideation Partner
Bhumika Patel
Artist
Dr. Krati Shah
Geneticist and Composter
Other Species Using Office Space
Puchcha
New Mom