TEL Alumni Spotlight, Richa Gupta
Spring 2024
For this season’s TEL Alumni Spotlight, Meena spoke with Richa Gupta, a beloved TEL 2020-21 Cohort member, about her TEL experience, and current work in leading social and emotional learning (SEL) programs for millions of children in public schools across India.
Current Roles and Context
Richa's journey as an educator began in low-income classrooms across India, where she recognized that a “focus on children's well-being and social-emotional learning, was missing in the system.” As a teacher who strived to do everything she could for her students every day, it was humbling for Richa to realize that more was needed to be done to transform the public education system. In the communities where Richa taught, most of her students were living in poverty and unsafe environments. She also lost two of her students to unfortunate events that “just seemed like it was too common in the communities.”
She recognized that these conditions made it challenging for her students “to regulate emotions, and to be able to learn and absorb what was happening, even in a high engagement classroom.” For Richa, these realizations were “where the seed of Labhya was born.”
To solve this, Richa co-founded Labhya, a visionary educational nonprofit. As she explained, the name Labhya is a Sanskrit word that means “within reach,” which she and her co-founders chose in order to help “children believe that change is within reach.” In her current role as CEO of Labhya, Richa guides her organization as they partner with state governments across India to institutionalize a daily well-being and SEL class across all state public schools for children from grades K-8. One of Labhya’s innovative features is that they work to co-create the curriculum alongside teachers and government stakeholders.
Social and Emotional Learning in India: Responding to Local Contexts
Cultural relevance and local context matter for SEL, especially so in India. Richa noted that when Labhya was founded, they were very mindful of India’s diversity - not just in terms of culture, religion, and language, but also in the teaching practices and legacy that its education systems had in various states. They were also aware of the vast inequity in India, which has the largest population of young people in the world, but where, “of the 190 million children enrolled in public schools, many come from a household income of less than $2 a day.” One of the founding innovations of Labhya is thus its context-responsive and co-creative approach. As Richa explained, “we don’t have a one size fits all curriculum. Whenever we partner with a new state government, not only do we create a contextual and local curriculum in the local language, but we spend almost a year deeply working with teachers (who have been teaching on the ground) in even remote areas of the state, in various languages.” Together, all government stakeholders and teachers come together to co-create the curriculum. Teachers are especially important as many of them have been teaching for 10 to 35 years, and their on-the-ground knowledge is invaluable. As Richa noted, “we were able to address so many of the challenges students faced simply by listening to our teachers.”
Currently, Labhya works with approximately 150,000 teachers every year across three states in India, impacting 2.4 million children every day. As Richa stated, “teachers are the real change-makers on the ground.” From co-creating curricula and listening to teachers, they learned that any professional development and resources for teachers had to be high-impact but low-burden in terms of time, ease of access, and materials needed. For example, they co-created handbooks with teachers that provided short lesson plans that could be implemented with minimal materials, such as a desk or a chair. Richa explained they found they could nurture their teachers’ facilitation skills by asking reflection questions without giving them any pressure about their performance, and through encouraging them to “show up with intention, and (by) listening to the kids.”
Bridging the global evidence gap in children’s well-being
Richa also spoke about Labhya’s deep commitment to bridging the evidence gap in the Social Emotional Learning and well-being sectors in India. Alongside accomplished researchers from universities like Harvard and University of Michigan, Labhya is conducting a large-scale study on children’s well-being. This study will help Labhya to learn more about which parts of their programs are having the most impact on a whole array of outcomes, including academic, mental health, and SEL outcomes like grit, resilience, and relationship skills. On a broader level, this large-scale study may provide robust evidence on the efficacy of SEL programming, and in India’s context especially. As Richa shared, she hopes “this study serves as a big launch pad for other organizations and practitioners who are starting to do the work and need that evidence.”
Learnings from TEL That Stay in Your Heart
Richa reflected on how her TEL experience prepared her for the challenges of her current work, and noted that there were so many learnings “that have just stayed in my heart since the TEL experience.” The first is the community that was nurtured through TEL. Richa shared that she learned so much from being in a community where there was vulnerability, diverse experiences, and deeply shared intentions and passion to transform the world. TEL became a community where she felt at home, and knows she can always turn to. This learning has informed her leadership at Labhya, and as she explained, “one thing I've tried to replicate at Labhya here, we're now a team of 200 people, is how do we build that common intentionality, that sense of community, that we are here to solve a problem together.” The second TEL learning that Richa spoke about was the contemplative practices that were shared through TEL, and which she continues to come back to and bring into her sessions with teachers at Labhya. In fact, the contemplative practices have “really opened up so many conversations within our teacher community on teacher well-being.” The third learning that Richa shared was about the mentorship she received through TEL, which introduced new resources to her that she continues to use at Labhya. For example, Richa mentioned the leadership survey that she participated in through TEL has provided a model for self-evaluation that she continues to use to lead her team and in webinars at Labhya.
Systemic Challenges and Role of Affinity Groups
Overall, Richa’s TEL experience helped her to deepen her understanding of the connections between SEL, well-being, and systems change. As she explained, “the TEL community was the first time, and actually, I think the only time I have engaged with a group of people working on well being who looked at it from a systems level” and the intersectionality of “how generational trauma, racism, and gender related challenges can impact the work that we're doing.” After the TEL Fellowship, Richa worked with her team at Labhya to understand the systemic challenges and barriers that their students faced, and they have continued this work over the years. Recently, for example, they conducted a gender audit to make sure that there were no blind spots in the way they were doing their work, and to understand where they might be causing harm.
In addressing systemic challenges, Richa also found that her experience of TEL’s affinity groups provided a powerful tool for having difficult conversations in a communal space where there is a shared culture and identity, and thus a sense of safety to speak. Richa has attempted to replicate these groups at Labhya, “to build systems for our teachers… to have space with their community or people they have some similarities with to openly share and learn and be able to speak up when they're not feeling confident or safe.”
The Way to Stay Resilient and Compassionate is Through Community
As a key leader in the global SEL movement, Richa acknowledged that the work of a social entrepreneur can be very lonely. However, Richa attributes her resilience and compassion as a leader to the support of her community. For Richa, community includes “TEL alumni, my co-founders, Team Labhya, our supporters, and all of the people who have held me through the years, who always tell me in one way or the other that we are here… That keeps me going in some of the hardest, hardest times.” It is through community that Richa also has come to experience the energy of possibility, the “divine synchronicity” that happens when connections are made whether between beings or events, and leading to new solutions. The divine synchronicity that Richa has experienced in the community has given her light and energy to move forward with a sense of the greater meaning and purpose in her work. As Richa said, it is a “knowing that it's not about me, it's about so many more people, so many children that we're working with.” Richa is motivated to lead for change at a systemic scale where the well-being of all children and the adults who serve them is the means and the vision.
We are grateful to Richa for being an integral member of the TEL beloved community, for sharing her leadership journey with us, and for the work that she is leading through Labhya.