Gaurav Singh is the co-founder of Slam Out Loud – a not-for-profit organisation. He has trained over 56,000 children in 950 villages and 30 urban slums across 4 states in India in various art forms like poetry, storytelling and theatre.
He’s shared his learnings through TEDx, workshops, panel discussions, and also been a winner at the pre-accelerator Unleash+ in China. A certified action learning coach, an avid reader and Rubik’s cube solver, Gaurav envisions to create a world where “Every individual will have a voice that empowers them to change lives”
Gaurav’s journey as an educator started when he joined “Teach for India” and was teaching the primary and secondary government school children. The children were mostly from families whose parents were daily wage labourers with hardly any education background. He was joined with his co-founder of Slam out Lout Jigyasa Labroo.
While they were teaching in these govt. schools, Gaurav says, “Though the system was giving emphasis on literacy and numeracy, that wasn’t sufficient enough to give children the skills that they would need to thrive in the world of 21st century. We believed that children should have the appropriate tools to utilise their potential to their maximum in whatever they do. At that point when we spoke to children, we realized that we need to create a space where they could voice their opinion and talk about the problems around them. We started conducting art workshop on story-telling, poetry etc. It gave them space to express themselves. Thus, Slam Out Loud started with this small experiment in the classroom. At the end of the year, we realized the potential it holds and saw dramatic changes in their behaviours and achievement levels both academic and co-curricular. Then we extended these art workshops to other schools in different states. From these workshops, we realized that children especially from adversities, needed space to imagine for themselves.”
Talking about Slam Out Loud’s Jijivisha Fellowship program he says, ” This progam is a part of co-curricular activities for children. In this, our professional artists teach the art forms of poetry, storytelling, theatre and visual arts. We have 68 fellows, 100 artist volunteers, impacting 38 communities and 6500+ children.