My Time At Pratham

      By Shikhir Goel, Volunteer, PMG Team

My name is Shikhir, and I started working at Pratham in July 2013. Now, precisely 1 year down the line I am leaving the organization to pursue my MBA. Looking back, it has been one of the most interesting periods of my life. The friendships I have forged and things I learned in this short space of time have made the experience unlike any other in my previous career. 

Before joining Pratham I had worked in finance for 8 years. I was looking for a new challenge, and the prospect of working at Pratham was exciting because it was an opportunity to apply my skills toward helping people in a way that would have a clear and noticeable impact. I came for my interview prepared with ideas to improve coverage of the Urban Program because I had noticed in my research that it was significantly smaller than their Rural Program. Of course it did not take long for me to realize that I had taken on a far greater challenge than originally anticipated! As the months progressed, I began to grasp the complexity of the task I had taken on as I was regularly hit with data issues, lack of uniformity in program structures across states, and a general lack of knowledge about the Urban Program as a whole. 

As a result however I learned a great deal about perseverance, patience, managing relationships, and generating meaningful analysis from a limited amount of data. The thing I will remember and miss the most from my time here is the people trying to take this wonderful organization forward. Everyday they seek to overcome new challenges, spending days on end conducting trainings in remote villages, all with an infectious enthusiasm that is truly inspiring. It is this innate drive that everybody I have worked with at Pratham possesses that kept me motivated and interested throughout my time here. This is truly a unique group of people throughout the organization, and I wish them all the very best for the future.