
Education, Leadership, and Impact.
Our Commitment!
The Story
The journey began when a group of young people came together to share their stories, aspirations and challenges. In 2018, they started a small campaign to reach out to the youth distributing T-shirts with the voices of youth printed in the form of quotes. This sparked their interest in building meaningful social engagement and creating spaces for authentic expression through art. In 2019, this youth collective started a Community Learning Centre for children from low-income families. The weekend art and craft sessions, offered at the Centre, witnessed overwhelming participation from children as well as youth volunteers. Realising the transformative potential of art, Thoughts to Action was formed in 2020, taking the community-based intervention to government schools to expand the outreach to children.​
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Our formal education system is centered heavily upon academic learning and outcomes, leaving out other components of holistic development like social, emotional and ethical competencies, critical thinking and creative expression on the periphery. The need to invest in these areas of learning was derived from the personal experiences of the young founders, and it is also being highlighted in the recent education policy, namely the National Education Policy (NEP) of 2020 and the National Curriculum Framework 2023.​
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Over the last four years, we have done extensive groundwork implementing art-based SEL (Social Emotional Learning) in government schools across the district of Jorhat, building a reliable network of youth volunteers, and strengthening art-integrated pedagogy through early childhood education, curriculum building, and collaboration with like-minded and youth-centered organisations.​
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Our foundation is built upon youth-led action and initiative, and strategic engagement with the system to enable structural change in education. Children are our major stakeholders who inform our processes with their responses and feedback to our interventions. As a budding organisation, we continue to evolve, integrating different elements of holistic learning rooted in the modality of Art.
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Road Map
Vision
To create empowered spaces for expression for all children using visual art as a medium.
Mission
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To work within the education system and create enabling spaces for children to access art and art-based learning.
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To build the capacities of youth to engage with and drive social change.
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To create a synergy of impact by pooling resources and capabilities, exchanging ideas among the network of organisations and collectives, and making the art-based model and good practices accessible to all.
Theory of Change
Our interventions are rooted in Youth-led action. Transitioning from childhood to adulthood, the youth are in a liminal space where their experiences from the past, hopes and aspirations for the future, creativity and desire for connection in the present inspire them to engage with the social systems zealously. We envisage young people as changemakers and invest in their capacities to become leaders and agents of positive change in society.
While we work with children as our primary stakeholders across educational institutions and communities, we recognise the need for strategic engagement with the education system where children derive a major part of their learning and development. For a sustainable long-term impact, the intention is to establish art and art-integrated pedagogy within the school system as an integral component, cultivating social-emotional learning in the formative years of an individual’s life.
Programme Model
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Thoughts to Action works with a multi-level engagement approach. At the school level, we implement direct intervention with children in the form of SEL sessions and other art-based activities. In this process, we also engage the school administration, management committee and educators. At the community level, we involve the youth, building their capacities as leaders, changemakers and art facilitators.
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To reach a wider audience, beyond our direct intervention, we collaborate with several organisations spread across geographical regions, to share resources, replicate successful interventions, demonstrate our model and strengthen the collective impact in the areas of education, youth leadership and art for social change.
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A multi-level intervention approach allows us to engage different stakeholders simultaneously, empowering them to play their respective roles in building, establishing and fortifying the vision and mission that we have set to achieve. This approach enables sustainability and continuity of impact.
Our People
As a youth-driven organisation, Thoughts to Action is led by a community of dynamic young people motivated to empower the voices of youth and children. Our team members assume diverse roles and responsibilities bringing their unique skill sets and vision, working together for the common goal. The functioning of the organisation is also supported hugely by the volunteer network.