Pilot kick-off!!

So the pilot is now official! We have decided to sponsor Ranjith and Satish Koteeswaran , aged 14 and 15 years respectively (their father, Mr T Koteeswaran runs a tea stall across our street, in Chennai) for our first Micro-loan initiative. The loan amount would be Rs 10,000 each for their first 6 months of schooling (to cover the costs of tuition, books and uniforms), and based on the repayment history and return of investment, we might plan further loan extensions. We have decided to fix a nominal interest rate of 10% (very low by MFI standards!), and hope to recover the full cost with interest within a reasonable time frame (the board has, of course, agreed to absorb the cost of default into the terms of loan extension, in the spirit of entrepreneurship). Keeping my fingers crossed for the experiment to succeed!

Meanwhile, we have already started to brainstorm on the strategy to revamp our website into a social investment channel. We will be getting together next week to build a roadmap, and identify the immediate next steps to kick-start this process. Exciting times ahead, will keep everyone posted!!

Micro-loan Pilot

We had another review meeting last Thursday to decide on whether or not to go ahead with the microloan program. There were mostly mixed reactions, but I think everyone seems to agree that dependency on donations to sponsor children’s education was probably not going to work very well this year; with the economy in doldrums, it was going to be difficult to find many sponsors. Personally, I think there is a possibility to leverage the microcredit concept for providing low interest student loans. I believe if we can keep the initiative “niche” enough to attract few deserving applicants, we might start to gain more confidence in the program and then later expand the program into a more robust social investment opportunity.

Anyway, I know a couple of children in my neighborhood (10th and 9th graders) whose parents are looking for some sort of financial assistance for their tuition needs. I know their parents well- they own the grocery shop opposite my apartment and are absolutely credible. The kids are really smart and I think we might have a genuine opportunity to launch a pilot. I discussed the case with the board, they seemed quite enthusiastic. Dhana knows another kid that he can vouch for, so we might be able to start the program with these three kids and monitor how the program goes..

I have asked Santhosh to draw up a sample business plan and bring it to the board for next week’s meeting. Meanwhile, I will be collecting some more information about the kids and start the review process. I am truly excited!

Microfinance

We had this amazing brains storming session today, Pankaj, one of the folks we have been having in our volunteer program came up with this amazing concept of launching a micro credit program for Creative minds. I was like, wow! Let’s talk about it. Apparently, Pankaj had worked for a little while with the Grameen Microloan program, and they were having this initiative to extend microloans to school children. I hadn’t heard about microfinance so much, and wanted to know more. I learnt that Mohammed Yusuf, a professor of economics in Bangladesh began this organization to provide collateral free loans to villagers who wanted to start their own business, since banks were unwilling to lend such small sums of money to them. Apparently, this turned out to be a very successful model.
I was real curious how this will work out for us! We obviously can’t give loans to college kids and wait for 4 years for them to repay! We probably have to do this for school kids, and maybe plan it for a semester wise period, Anyway we were talking about these ideas for almost an hour! Sounded really exciting, might launch a pilot project. I do know some kids in Chennai who were looking for sponsorships, might talk to those parents next week.
Anyway, planning to read up on Mohammed Yusuf’s book “Banking for the Poor” over the weekend. Might get some more insights!

Oscar Musical ON!

It was graduation night at Whole World Theater’s improv class of 2010. The stage setting was a funeral service for a young man who had died because of a shark attack. And not just any shark-an alien shark! As one of the mourners on stage, I had just delivered my eulogy and had started talking about how, while growing up as a Rastafarian, I had met this amazing kid Tom (the dead guy), while I was bumming for bananas in the beaches of Jamaica. I started talking about how I missed him today after all these years, when Lauren called out “Sounds like a song. Oscar Musical ON! ”
I was nervous. I could see my buddies (Sanjay, Mani, Prabhakar, Amrutha, Srinidhi and Shyam) sitting in audience rooting for me (Thanks guys!) and even the entire audience (some 150 folks, mostly Americans) seemed so encouraging, smiling and waiting for me to deliver something wonderful. I paused for a moment, and then started singing about how I had worked so hard to teach Pilates to Tom, only to find that years later, while performing crazy stunts, he had leapt in the mouth of an alien shark! After about 3 minutes of me crooning crazy stuff to the music of the amused keyboard artist, Lauren finally declared “Musical OFF!”

By this time, my heart was beating at a million beats per second! I know as improvisational comedians, we are allowed to come up with crazy ideas..but was not sure yet if the audience was with me on this one. But I didn’t have to worry so much- the crowd loved the story, and almost immediately, I heard a thunderous round of applause! My friends in the audience were chanting my name, and for a minute there, I felt like a rock star!!

Well, everyone performed great that day – Wes and Charles were hilarious as superheroes with some sort of a family crisis, Bernardette was spot on as the bitching mother-in-law, Les, Jaya, Ken, David and Mike were just awesome during the funeral scene. And we had so much fun that night! Anyway, graduation is over now, and I will be missing those folks for now. Advanced classes begins in 3 months time, Lauren would be sending out emails about who have been selected (keeping my fingers crossed! ), but I am really looking forward to jamming with my team again.. And doing some more fun improv :)

Improv Jam!

I had my first jam session yesterday and we had a blast! I got to meet some really cool folks from the Wednesday class- the more, the merrier!
It was kind of strange not to have Lauren instructing us – I was starting to feel nervous without having her giving notes at the end of my practice sessions. But in the end, I realized that jam is all about learning to be confident with oneself during scenes and not be afraid to experiment and explore ideas. In fact, I discovered that I was a pretty good MC when Les and David did their scenes! And yeah, we got to choose what games we wanted to play and I, of course, wanted to do the alphabet game, which in my opinion is the funnest game of all improve games. Lots of free association stuff, mirroring and story-telling- by the end of the 2 hour session, I was exhausted, but feeling on top of the world!
We decided to hit the nearby café for some pizza and coke and promised to do this every week J And I am already looking forward to learning new things this Saturday. And practice during the next Jam class!!

First Class

I had my first improv class yesterday. There were 15 others in my Saturday class (there is another class that meets on Wednesdays) and they are a motley group. Wes is a school teacher, Ken runs a graphics design company, Bernardette is a retired pilot, Jaya is a homemaker, David is still at school, Charles practices stand-up comedy, Les runs half marathon,… so on! I will give a more detailed class profile over the next few weeks, but right now I am very excited at meeting so many Americans outside work. Lauren Goins is our instructor, she is simply amazing and taught us some neat warm-up games today (Zip-Zap, Free association, mirroring, etc ) . Also I will have jam sessions on Wednesdays; basically practice everything I learn in the previous week’s class with my class mates. And I get to watch free shows on Saturdays.
I got to talking to my new classmates today, and we decided to go for lunch at the nearby Deli. Charles and Steve had never talked to an Indian before (seems they have never really ventured out of Georgia) so were curious to know more about India, the culture, the food etc.
Oveall, I am so happy I took this up and am looking forward to some great 'Jam' sessions in the weeks ahead!

Whole World Theater

I still remember watching my first improvisational comedy show an year ago at Whole World Theater. My friend said that he had an additional ticket and asked me if I was interested to watch the show. More out of curiosity than any real interest, I agreed to come. And it was a decision I never regretted!

"And that's how the cat became a dog!" explained the lady on the stage, after her stage partner enquired about the cat he had gifted her on her birthday. The response was not scripted, the actors had not rehearsed their lines, and the whole story was improvised based on suggestions made by the audience . The actors were really funny and everything seemed so 'instinct-based', the ideas were amazing and there was just so much creativity in the air. At the end of the scene, the crowd whistled, applauded laughed and went crazy- they loved every bit of it. And so did I!

Last week, my friend called me to inform that Whole World was starting a beginner's improv program and asked me if I was interested to join. Of course I was! So i signed up right away, and received an email from Lauren, our instructor welcoming me to the program. She informed me that the first class would be starting next Saturday and there would be 20 other new joinees. I would, however, need to come prepared with a creative way of introdcuing myself! I do have a few ideas in my head (Flash Cards? Powerpoint slides? )

Anyway I am right now super-excited! And so, I have decided to start an Improv themed Blog to chronicle, what I am sure will be exciting times ahead as an improv artist (alright..an improv trainee :))!!