*Note: This is an unstructured document that's just a collection of my thoughts. I've left it as it is without editing and refining to retain its authenticity.* When we started ViKa I actually didn't know what I wanted to do, and it was something of a whim. There wasn't much clarity apart from the fact that I felt learning spaces and environments aren't enjoyable and that we need to do something for children to thrive. I didn't have an idea of why it was needed, how the education system worked or on how to go about things. It was purely something that I thought was fun and something I needed to do more for myself than anything else. Over the first few years, I grew along with the center. While we poured our energies in to the center, we also gained so much during that process. I realised how powerful the idea of praxis was, and I read so much. I built up so many good habits particularly reflecting and writing and spending time with my own thoughts. It's funny to look back at the kind of things the earliest version of me worried about and how far I've come since then. With extensive dialogue and conversations with Prasanna, Abu and Venkatesh ideas started to form and agency in particular is one that I found we were constantly coming back to. While it was definitely an idea I grew up with and had in my mind while we started, deeper reflection helped me realise why it was important. The first few years we spent focused on making one space that thrives and figuring out how to help every child craft their own learning journey. The focus was on each day and each moment at the centres, and we spent time crafting activities and reflecting on them. It was really enjoyable, but there was always an internal struggle of when we should take the next step. 'Perfect is the enemy of good enough' and we kept trying to make our one centre better and better. Covid was the watershed moment that changed all this. I'm not sure if we would have naturally progressed to a more zoomed out view, but covid really forced us to do it. I got into other projects and ViKa went into the back burner. There was an angst about not being able to go to the center and spend time with the children but also covid put into perspective just how many communities are marginalised and affected. Opportunities also presented themselves and with less of an attachment to one single community we actually took them this time. Still I struggled to move beyond single centre and was still shuttling between centres trying to influence centres at an everyday level. By this point though our ideas had crystallised a lot more. Our time in a particular community taught us a lot, and now it became a case of applying the ideas in a different community and seeing what could be generalised. This wasn't an easy process, and it was hard to treat each community as its own space without constantly comparing to our first experience. While we wanted to learn from it, we also wanted every community to evolve in its own way. The patterns we observed with children we started observing at a facilitator and centre level. I found that it was a lot more challenging to keep the same mindset this time though. It's a lot easier with an individual and particularly children to be kind and empathetic. With adults, when you're paying them, when they have responsibilities towards children it started getting very difficult. I wish I had read more then. During this period my attention was split and growth was slow. It has really been a struggle to get into this headspace now to apply the principles of ViKa at a zoomed out level. Today I enjoy this challenge a lot too. I enjoy thinking at the macro level and figuring out how to work at a facilitator and a centre level. Somewhere along the way I also realised that I had formed certain ideas. I always doubted myself as someone a little too unopinionated and not able to take a stand. It's kind of a fascinating process how I evolved into having some clarity of thought and knowing what we're working towards. When I look back it's clear that a transformation happened, and it's reaffirmed my belief in the process.