At The HEAD Foundation, I focus on our education endeavours, particularly the capacity building of educators in the less resourced parts of Southeast Asia. We’re not in a position to influence policy—instead, we harness our networks to create programmes for educators, to equip them with the skills to be effective teachers and leaders.
Vignesh Louis Naidu
MPP 2013
Director of Operations, The Head Foundation
Non-profit Organization Management
When Covid-19 struck last year, we couldn’t run any of our face-to-face programmes. That’s when I started talking to educators in our network, and I became fascinated by their efforts to innovate during this time. In the Philippines, there were slum areas where children didn’t have access to devices for online learning. But these children had radios at home, so educators approached radio stations to request for airtime, where they could broadcast and reach out to their students. In a remote part of Indonesia, students had devices but high-speed internet was non-existent, while mobile data was patchy at best, and extremely costly. A teacher there approached the air force, which had the technology, to borrow their space for lessons, and the air force was willing to help out.
Hearing these stories inspired me to create our webinar series, “Making HEADway,” to help Southeast Asian educators respond to disruptions in education brought on by Covid-19. To date, we’ve had over 4,000 attendees for the three-webinar series. To help even more educators, we compiled actionable insights into reader-friendly handbooks, and made them available in four languages. We’ve since printed about 12,000 copies of the books, and you can download them as well. I think our reach has been significant, and the most heartening feedback has been hearing educators say, “I can try this in my school!”
If I had any advice for students, it would be that ‘changing the world’ can often involve mundane day-to-day responsibilities. It’s not always exciting, but we need to get the little things right before we can accomplish a bigger goal.
It’s been a decade since I was a student at the LKY School, but I’ve continued to lean on the alumni network, where I’ve met people who share my vision and are willing to support me. Most recently, fellow alumni helped with translating and disseminating our handbooks in Indonesia and Malaysia. As an LKYSPP student, I appreciated hearing from early generation Singapore policymakers, because when you’re working around the region, you’re dealing with scenarios that Singapore faced many years ago. It was useful for me to see how our early policymakers crafted policies and programmes that were responsive to the needs of the people.
If I had any advice for students, it would be that ‘changing the world’ can often involve mundane day-to-day responsibilities. It’s not always exciting, but we need to get the little things right before we can accomplish a bigger goal. To avoid burnout, I would recommend a pragmatic approach: Don’t depend on your job to define your life’s mission. Instead, bring your passion to your job, and remember that at the end of the day, a job is just one way of driving change.
Vignesh Louis Naidu
Master in Public Policy (MPP 2013)
Vignesh Louis Naidu is the Director of Operations at The HEAD Foundation, which supports and funds sustainable education and healthcare projects in Asia.