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Personal Safety - The Safe Campus Story
110 Plays4 years ago
Dipti Shankar trained as a fashion designer but left the fashion profession to undergo training in Israel in Krav Maga & Kapap, the martial arts of the special forces.
Dipti who is the founder of social enterprise , Safe Campus, is my guest on this episode of The Entrepreneur Speaks Podcast. She talks about her work promoting mental, physical and emotional well being and safety of children in schools and institutions.
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Transcript
Introduction to The Entrepreneur Speaks
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome friends to The Entrepreneur Speaks.
00:00:29
Speaker
I'm your host Kofi Anumaidu. Each week, I host an amazing entrepreneur on their journey, successes, and challenges. It is my hope that we will learn from their experiences as we all work towards living a life of passion and purpose. My guest today is Deepthi Shankar.
Meet Deepthi Shankar: Fashion Designer to Martial Artist
00:00:53
Speaker
She's the founder and director of Save Campus. She's a trained fashion designer
00:01:00
Speaker
and a mother of two sons. Dee is the first Indian woman to have trained in Israel in krav maga and kapap, the martial arts of the special forces. She joins me today to share her journey with us. You are most welcome to The Entrepreneur Speaks Dee.
00:01:22
Speaker
Thank you so much Kofi for having me here. It is such a pleasure to be here on your talk show. Let's start off by getting to know you better. Who is Dee Shaka? And how was your childhood like?
Overcoming Challenges: Dee's Upbringing in India
00:01:37
Speaker
So Dee is somebody I would say who has really lived her life each day as it comes. I grew up in the hinterland of India in a God forsaken land called Bihar.
00:01:52
Speaker
I don't know whether you've heard about that or not. My father is an engineer. No, I haven't. So my father is an engineer and he was traveling all over the country and as a child, I traveled with him. We joined various schools and various places we traveled with him.
00:02:08
Speaker
And then one fine day in a very small sleepy industrial town, I was put in a boarding school and I grew up there. And you know, in all these years of growing up and then moving to the big city like Delhi, trying to make a career, trying to make a life of your own.
00:02:25
Speaker
One thing that always stayed in my mind, Kofi, was as a girl, as a woman, there were challenges every day in our lives to make decisions, to stand by them, to get people to support you, to help you believe in yourself at every step of life. I had to pat my back and say, come on, go ahead. Do it. Doesn't matter. Whatever comes your way. I know you can deal with it.
00:02:49
Speaker
You know, that is how life was moving on. So as a person, I would say, I am a go-getter. I am somebody who believes in herself. And I feel there's nothing in this world that's not possible for any of us to do. It's just about how much we believe in the cause and how far are we willing to go to achieve the goals that we have set out for.
00:03:12
Speaker
So that's who D is and even today, every day, I strive to make the best of what I have and to contribute to the lives of people around me so that they don't have to go through a lot of experiences that we talk about, that we hear about, and especially for girls and women in India, I wish I can do a lot more than I am still doing. That's very impressive.
00:03:34
Speaker
Thank you. You came as a fashion designer. So at what stage of your life did you decide to go for training in Israel?
From Fashion to Safety: A Shift in Dee's Passion
00:03:42
Speaker
And what fueled that decision? Yeah, so you know, I feel like being a fashion designer, you know, how it is like the glitz and glamour and the industry and you go around and like going around with models and fashion shows and stuff like that. That's like really interesting world, you know. And when I finished my studies in fashion,
00:04:01
Speaker
We did a lot of shows and I was doing industries, various places where we were producing garments and I was being a part of a lot of teams that were traveling India and abroad and doing a lot of work.
00:04:15
Speaker
But at the same time, every day I was seeing people around me being stifled, being not able to say no, even when they wanted to, being not able to deal with their real selves because they were trying to fit into the social structure that we have. At every step, there's a duality of nature that we have. One is that who you are, and one is who you are expected to be.
00:04:41
Speaker
and that I saw around me quite a lot and because of that I felt that there was a great sense of insecurity in people, the great sense of fear which used to either express as people trying to dominate other people with loud voices, with choice of words and language, with a very strong body language
00:05:03
Speaker
Or there were people who were willing to give up and be docile so that they don't get into difficult situations. And both of these extremes, you know, Kofi was like something which did not connect with me. And I used to start questioning myself, why as an educated woman, as a person who knows what's happening around her, as somebody who knows how to live and make things happen, even then, why are we not able to just say a simple no?
00:05:33
Speaker
And that made me look for places where I could go and learn how to be strong, how to fight back as a woman in situations if I had to face one. And that's how I stumbled upon the courses happening in Israel. So Israel, as you know, is the world leader in safety and security, and they offer various courses on personal safety.
00:05:53
Speaker
So I went to Israel and when I went to Israel the world opened up because I saw children as young as four years being put on the mat and trained to first learn to be strong and be able to fight back. Everything else comes later. You want to be a doctor, engineer, scientist, you first have to know how to fight back. Only then you can do anything else and that I think
00:06:15
Speaker
was very important lesson of my life. Which made me decide one fine day, pack up my bags, say no to fashion and move ahead and be a self-protection instructor. And that's how Safe Camp was started Gophi. Very interesting Jenny. Now that you've introduced us to your business, tell us a bit more about that business. So tell us about Safe Camp and what services you offer.
Building Safe Campus: Mission and Vision
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, so Safe Campus, as the name suggests, it's about creating campuses that are safe. And when I say campus, it's a school campus, it's a college campus, any kind of place where children are studying, where education is being imparted.
00:06:57
Speaker
is what I had in my mind because as I said when I saw in Israel children as young as four years being trained and I saw in India I was a 30 year old woman when I went to Israel and nobody had ever spoken to me if something goes wrong how would you fight back if there is a scene of a domestic violence and somebody in your family
00:07:19
Speaker
creates a situation where you feel uncomfortable. How do you speak up for yourself? When you're walking on the street and people look at you in a way that you don't like, how do you make a statement and say, no, don't look at me like that? No, my parents had never spoken to me. My teachers had never spoken to me about it.
00:07:36
Speaker
None of my friends would discuss what was happening around us because of which there was no immunity. There was no preparation. There was no planning. It was all a surprise. And then every day the data in India going up, the amount of crime and violence and the amount of the mental and emotional turmoil people go through.
00:07:56
Speaker
was very, very high. So after I came back from Israel, I started training in corporates first. As I was training, you know, during the conversations, every tea break and lunch break, we would have, oh, really, you're doing such an interesting work, wow, it's so much fun. And then they would drop their story saying, when I was 10 years old, this happened. When I was in school, that happened. When I was going to college, this happened. So that made me think,
00:08:22
Speaker
that children much younger than when they get into jobs and professions, they don't have the confidence to stand up and speak up for themselves. So if we really want to bring about a change, we have to go down to schools. And that is why the namesake campus because the schools are a place where children grow their wings and they grow safety as skin over them.
00:08:47
Speaker
Like they are learning in the English math science or whatever subjects at an early age, they are also learning how to stay strong and how to be able to speak up for things that they don't like. And that is how I became a social entrepreneur. I like to call myself a social entrepreneur because this is the subject which is very close to my heart, Kofi. And when I started working, I really didn't know that this could be a commercial venture, that people would pay me for what I'm doing.
00:09:15
Speaker
It was just something which came from my heart and it just connected with the situations around me. But then now, after six years of my journey, as SAFE Campus, we work with about 150 schools span India and abroad. And we have the best of the places like the IITs, the Indian Institute of Technology, the IIMs, the best of the schools that you can think of.
00:09:38
Speaker
And we've been there for them and I've seen my children growing from a young kid to a confident young adult and that really gives me a great happiness and joy. We really are being a part of people's lives.
00:09:52
Speaker
So that's what Safe Campus does, Kofi. So you say you've been running this for six years. Yeah. How has the journey been
Entrepreneurial Struggles: Crafting a Business Model
00:09:59
Speaker
so far? Ah, it's been a Herculean task, Kofi, because as I said, you know, this is not a profession which people look at from a perspective of hiring an instructor of personal safety. Like if I was a doctor, people would come to me and pay my fees. So when I say I teach you how to fight back, I teach you how to speak up, I teach you self-defense, people will say, ah,
00:10:20
Speaker
when there's a problem i'll deal with it god for everyone and stuff like that and it's so difficult to convince people and say that that you know you could pay me and i could take classes and teach you something like this so i started from a place like that so initial journey was very very tough being able to really make people think that this is important for you was difficult
00:10:42
Speaker
But then as we progressed, I found such fantastic leaders and mentors who believed in us, who supported us. In fact, there were some people who really held my hand and walked me through and said, Dee, you are creating a future and you are somebody who really are bringing about a change in the way people look at the situation around them. So I want to help you and reach you as far as possible. And that coffee was a great reward.
00:11:10
Speaker
for the world that I believed in. And that really helped safe campus grow from step to step. So initial two years, I would say, was just about traveling, was just about meeting people, showing them, like my portfolio, like this is what I do, this is how it happens, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then after two years, people suddenly start taking note, wow, this works. Oh, she really talks nice. Oh, really? It makes a lot of sense. It's different. And then I think the ball started rolling.
00:11:39
Speaker
That's how the journey has been so far. It's been fantastic. Very interesting to note.
Expansion Challenges: Team and Language Barriers
00:11:43
Speaker
What has been some of the challenges if encountered in running Safe Campus? Are there challenges? And if there are, can you share some of them with us? I think, Kofi, there have been a lot of challenges. The first challenge was to have a business model because there was no yardstick. There was nobody else doing a business like this. There were people who were teaching martial arts like Taikwondo Karate and they have lessons and
00:12:07
Speaker
and they charge a certain amount of fees. But then here I was somebody who was talking about having a classroom training on how to have mental strength, having a classroom training on identifying your emotions and being able to deal with them. For example, when somebody gets angry and irritated, they start abusing people around them, they start hitting around them,
00:12:31
Speaker
They start being nasty. But if we taught our children at a very early stage how to identify that emotion, oh, I know I am angry, so I need to deal with my anger and not show my anger to people around me, that would be the key to not creating an unpleasant situation for people around me.
00:12:52
Speaker
So I started from there and I saw that children connected with it. Children started talking about situations. Children started sharing their stories and then it became a business model. But when I started, I really didn't know how to go about it, how to design my classes, who am I going to approach, who's going to give me business. It was just an open world with no direction. So I had to pave my own path.
00:13:18
Speaker
that was the first block the second block was when i started expanding initially i was doing it all by myself but humanly not possible to cater to such a large population like india and grow in business so hiring people what kind of people would be willing to work with me
00:13:36
Speaker
would be able to create the kind of impact i'm looking at because i was not looking at martial artists i was not looking at teachers i was looking at passionate people driven with desire to change the world around them and it is so difficult what kind of interview would you have to screen such people and help them
00:13:55
Speaker
So it was really tough. So finding people to work for you, then training them, getting them ready to deliver. That was one of the major block I feel I had. And then the rest, of course, fell in place because once you have a plan, once you have a structure, once you try and test the water, then, you know, OK, this works, this doesn't work. So I did an R&D for many years before I really got into the serious business of the work that I do.
00:14:23
Speaker
And that R&D really helped me that this is how I'm going to go about it. This is what it works. This doesn't work. So that kind of really experiment, I would say. And I think every business has that space, you know, where you have to find your niche and you have to know where I belong and how to carve my niche out of it.
00:14:41
Speaker
So these have been a few challenges, I would say. And then gradually, especially with a country like India, your language is also a barrier because we speak more than 35 languages all over the country. Like officially Kofi, like if you have to work in South India, you have to know Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu. If you're working in and around Delhi, you have to know Hindi and English.
00:15:04
Speaker
If you're working in the hinterland, there are various different languages. So that was also a challenge because having a decentralized team from various parts of the country would not work. Having a team from here would not know the language to go and deliver. So I would say in the first three years, I learned about 15 languages, traveling, talking to people, translating what they're saying, trying to understand what they're saying. That was a great learning experience.
00:15:29
Speaker
Very interesting. So just as you shared challenges with us, I believe there's also been a lot of lessons you've learned along the line. Can you share some of these lessons with us? Yeah, the biggest lesson I think I have learned is...
00:15:44
Speaker
is never give up because there are days which are very very tough and you feel like oh my god how is this going to happen but the business is designed for you to test the waters to to work hard towards achieving your targets to see your goal through straight so like there were days you know when i would wake up and the only thing i can see is oh this is what i want to do i don't know who i have to talk to i don't know where i have to travel
00:16:09
Speaker
I don't know how it will happen but in my mind constantly I'm just thinking of one thing, this is what I'm going to be doing today and God is kind. He gives you the signals, he gives you light at the end of the tunnel and you find oh wow this guy could work, oh this lady is fantastic and that's how I think the biggest lesson I learned was never, never, never give up. There will be tough days, there'll be good days, there'll be bad days
00:16:33
Speaker
But there'll always be light at the end of the tunnel. And the second thing I learnt was honesty in my business, Kofi. Because I never went to people and said, okay, I'm going to charge you this much. No, if this doesn't work, okay, let's start that part. That's not like selling up a product, which is, for example, a phone. I wasn't selling a phone. I was selling an emotion. I was selling a thought process, a concept. And there was no price tag to it.
00:16:58
Speaker
So the only thing that worked was honesty. I walked into people's offices, honestly, this is how I did it. I walked into people's offices and I said, this is what I do. This is what I want to do. Now tell me, how is this going to happen? Because I want to work with you. And then those heads of the institutions and those leaders, they would sit down with me, okay, let's plan it like this. Can we work like that?
00:17:21
Speaker
And you know that's how it evolved and evolved and people believe in you when you are honest. People believe in you when they see that you are truly committed to the cause that you stand for. So my learnings, I would say the three most important learnings. The first is never give up. The second is believe in yourself.
00:17:40
Speaker
Know whatever is happening, whatever you are doing is towards the goal, the purpose that you have set out to achieve. And the third is be honest, be truthful because one moment of life might get you some work, but in the long run, it's going to damage the identity you are trying to create. It's going to tarnish the image that you have created for yourself. So these three learnings, I think, are very important for any business. Thank you very much for sharing this with us.
00:18:08
Speaker
Now we'd like to know what really inspires you? What inspires you to do this? What inspires me to do this? You know Koki, that's such a tough question to answer to be honest with you because you know like I've had so many personal experiences growing up as a girl in India there were times when I felt like why am I a girl you know because the challenges at every step my parents would be worried if I have to go out I was a very sports loving person so I would play I would be
00:18:36
Speaker
out playing with my friends in the evening. I grew up in a boarding school. So even if we were going out for a trip or an excursion, the teachers would be worried. Be careful. Don't go here. Don't go there. Don't talk to these people. At every step, we had the dos and don'ts handed over to us because safety was a very, very big concern in our everyday lives.
00:19:00
Speaker
It's like a subtle undertone, you know, nobody talks about it, but it is always there. Nobody teaches you how to do it, but it is always a concern. So it's like, I felt like if it was like maths, you teach me how to do two plus two. So next time I'm going to come to you and ask what is two plus two.
00:19:17
Speaker
but in terms of safety nobody teaches us how to okay this is how it works rule number one rule number two rule number three it never happened like that so that inspired me to do something like this because i felt when i from such a family background did not have courage to face the situations in my personal and professional lives think of the people
00:19:40
Speaker
in my country, you know, we're a vast population and most of the crime and violence happens in the lower segment of society. Those people who do not have that kind of education, that kind of support from the family, they can't even go and complain. The data is 80% unreported in my country. And that gave me the strength to say, don't wait for things to happen and react. Prepare yourself before they happen.
00:20:09
Speaker
Because God helps those who help themselves. And that has been something that has been motivating me. We are confronted with this pandemic, the COVID-19 pandemic.
Adapting to COVID: Innovating Safe Campus
00:20:20
Speaker
And just as it affects us individually, I believe businesses are also affected. Has the COVID-19 pandemic affected your business in any way?
00:20:31
Speaker
So Kofi, to be honest with you, in India, COVID-19 hit in March. And I work with schools. The academic session here starts in April and finishes in March. So all the new projects, the new work starts from the 1st of April. The 1st of March, we were declared under COVID-19. And from a business that was working fantastic overnight, we were at zero business.
00:20:54
Speaker
because all the schools closed down, all the institutions closed down. Even today, after eight months of corona hitting India, the schools haven't reopened. And when children are not coming to school, my work was 90% in-person touch field. And we cannot do that now because that's the primary premise of spread of COVID-19. So we had no work.
00:21:21
Speaker
Technically, zero work, zero business, zero revenue. Overnight, we did not know what to do. It took me about two months, the whole of March, the whole of April. I thought, thought, thought, what am I going to do? How are we going to survive? Because we are a new company. Being able to hold on to the entire team, paying the salaries, bearing the expenses, being able to stay sane in these situations was very, very tough. But we stuck to each other and we knew that we have to sail through this.
00:21:50
Speaker
We took two months to settle down and think about it and by May, I was up again with the online sessions and classes that we have now been doing. We work with a lot of schools now and we've been doing the online sessions in terms of safety. We've been doing some corporate workshops also. We've been doing in-person classes also.
00:22:09
Speaker
and gradually we found art to hold. People started accepting the new normal, people started understanding and then initially people were not paying us. It was like we were doing online classes but like pro bono.
00:22:21
Speaker
But then gradually people realize the pro-modern does not help you pay the fees, pay the bills. So how do you go about it? So then gradually it changed. And I'm happy now, Kofi, that things are a lot, lot better. Definitely it's nowhere close to the kind of business we were doing for the Palma Moketa country. But I'm very, very hopeful that very soon we are all going to be back to the way of life we had
Empowering Children: A Session at Safe Campus
00:22:47
Speaker
earlier.
00:22:47
Speaker
So can you walk us through a typical session with the kids? What exactly do you do to them? Yeah, that's a very interesting thing to talk about. So what we generally do is like my sessions are designed ideally for 45 minutes to 60 minutes. And in a 60 minute lesson, the first 15 minutes is what I call a case study. So I pick up a subject. For example, my subject for today is gender
00:23:17
Speaker
equality or gender sensitization, whatever name you want to call it. So first 15 minutes is going to be any case study from any part of the world. We give them a story and say, okay, this is what happened. We portray the real life scenario through a role play, through a video, through a storytelling.
00:23:35
Speaker
And then we ask the participants to identify the situations in the story. What happened? What went wrong? Give us five things that could have been different had we thought differently. So we make them think. Once they start thinking, the mind opens up and they start talking about it. Or this happened to me. A similar story happened with me. Or my mom was in a similar story someday. And they start connecting that case study with themselves, with their personal lives.
00:24:05
Speaker
I feel this is a great connect because this helps my participants open up and have a one-on-one relationship with the instructor to help them heal if they have any scars of previous experiences, or it helps to empower them and helps them believe that if at all it happens with me, I know how to fight back. So the first 15 minutes is that. The next 30 minutes is going to be a solution to that situation.
00:24:35
Speaker
which is practical, which is real, it could be mental, it could be physical depending on the kind of topic we are taking. So if a gender sensitization is being discussed, so what are the steps to be taken? How you can start affecting your immediate environment? What are the stereotypes you have experienced and how do you break them? So we talk about all of that. We work on solution finding programs with their tabletop exercises.
00:25:01
Speaker
group exercises, there are physical exercises we do with two team building. And then after 30 minutes, the last 15 minutes is the value-based learning. The value-based learning is drawing inference from what we did. Plus, what are those values that we develop within ourselves, which helps us become a better human being so that we are not one of those people who impacts or creates a situation for people
00:25:29
Speaker
like what we discussed in the class today. So if I am talking about gender sensitization, my participants are going to tell me from today onwards, I'm going to ensure that I do not differentiate between people based on their gender. I will ensure that I go and talk to my parents and my siblings and my friends. I ensure that I'll start a social media campaign. So that kind of resolve
00:25:54
Speaker
to be a part of the solution is what comes in the last 15 minutes, which is very activating, which is very enhancing in the way the person looks at that situation which has been discussed in the class. And I ideally take a batch of not more than 20 to 25 people so that I have one-on-one conversation at least once during the one hour so that we are able to connect at a higher level and impart the kind of learning we really are looking at.
00:26:24
Speaker
So that's how a session ideally looks like I think that's what I started with Kofi and I would like to end it with the same believe in yourself God has created each one of us with immense power
00:26:43
Speaker
to create a difference in the lives of people around us. Only if you believe in yourself, you can reach the goal that you are meant to be. And so many times, you don't even know where your goal lies. You just have to keep walking and knowing, I am doing my bit. Leave the rest to God. God takes care of each one of us. Thank you very much, D. Shankar, for sharing your experiences with us today on the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast.
00:27:13
Speaker
We wish you the very best. Thank you so much, Kofi, for having me here. It's been such a pleasure to be a part of this conversation. And I wish you all the best. And I wish your podcast a great success. I wish all the listeners learn and grow with every episode that you come with. Thank you very much. This has been another exciting episode of the Entrepreneur Speaks podcast. I'll come your way next time with another interesting episode.
00:27:43
Speaker
I remain your host Kofi Annemedou. Stay safe and let's continue to keep up our life. Cheers.