About Us
The heads, hearts and hands that make us
Founder
LAKSHMI RAMMOHAN
Of all the roles Lakshmi has had over the years as an event manager, marketing head of IT and real estate companies, wedding planner, entrepreneur, daughter, sister and wife, being Mamma to her daughter has been the one to influence her the most. The realization, that she was her child’s only voice and defense during their most formative years and of the impact early years has on lifelong decisions & behavior led to her to gentle parenting practices. Earthlings Early Years was born of a desire to extend gentle caregiving practices to the learning landscape of the city’s littlest ones. In the last 4 years, Lakshmi has been active as a peer counselor for new mothers, guiding them on gentle, age appropriate baby and toddler sleep practices and has honed her skills on storytelling, acting, and making-up-songs and also playing mommy to babies of the canine & feline kind. More recently she has been pursuing a diploma in child psychology and certifications in specialized learning disorders, and teaching through drama.
Laksh, as she is called by everyone, is most likely to be found with a group of giggling toddlers dancing to a song in nonsense verse, while she’s not busy turning the administrative wheels and keeping things shipshape at Earthlings
Founder
ANURADHA NAMBIAR
With her love for and extensive experience in research and documentation of living traditions and knowledge systems, turning her attention to the process of how a child learned was but natural to Anuradha. Owing to her daughter’s sensitivity to sensory stimulation she had ringside seats to how her daughter processed information, what she chose to learn, how she went about doing it and what it took to gently make her child comfortable with experiencing the stimuli around her. It made her think long and hard about how we learn, the environment that happens in and about holding space for everyone. Her deep dive into unschooling, learning through play, arts based learning, Waldorf, Montessori, S.T.E.A.M, led her to believe that there was a need for a more cohesive learning environment for our toddlers and therefore the need for a custom curriculum. elping little minds express themselves creatively
facilitators
Advisor
Arzu Mistry
Arzu Mistry is an educator and artist and maintains a high level of dedication and enthusiasm for art and design, as mediums for pedagogy, advocacy, transformation, and intervention for the building of sustainable inclusive communities. Arzu currently facilitates the education working group for Creative Dignity, A consortium of organizations working with crafts communities in India. Arzu is the founder of the Art in Transit and placeARTS public art projects in the city of Bangalore with a focus on art as a medium for dialogue between people and the urban spaces they inhabit. Arzu co-facilitates the Accordion Book Project and is the co-creator of the artist book Unfolding Practice: Reflections on Learning and Teaching. Her art and education practice connects teachers, youth, and families with place using memory, story, play, and art and design practices through inter-disciplinary education and public community art and design facilitation, livelihoods training, teacher professional development, and educational research and practice. Arzu co leads the Creative Education undergraduate program and co-leads the Public Pedagogy and Arts Practice Masters program at the Srishti Manipal Institute for Art Design and Technology in Bangalore. She is a fellow with Reimagining Migration and has taught with the Project Zero Classroom, the Future of Learning and Arts, and Passion-Driven Learning programs at the Harvard Graduate School of Education since 2006. Arzu has a BFA from the California College of the Arts, an Ed.M from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and is currently persuing her Doctoral work at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Advisor
Jithin Palakkal
Jithin holds a law degree from ILS Law College, Pune. He began working with Mr. Vinod Abraham in 2006.
Along with his mentor, he primarily handles Arbitration matters and Negotiations intended for amicable settlement of disputes. In our Contracts and Litigation departments, he exercises a supervisory role and provides guidance to the associates. He handles all aspects related to our Contract Management Programme. His responsibilities also include interacting with present and future clients and building a stable, long-term relationship with them.
Advisor
Suchitra Narayan
Consultant special educator for the last 40 years working with children from birth to adults, parents and teachers. Have been trained in early child development and learning through the Montessori method, Sri Aurobindo, Jiddu Krishnamurthy approaches / philosophies etc, as well as through special education methods for various kinds of disabilities which follows a developmental approach.
Founder SANSKRITI – Resource Centre for Inclusion (2005 March); a registered NGO in Cochin; to empower and enable parents, teachers and persons with disabilities.
Work closely with doctors (paediatricians, neurologists, psychiatrists, ENT specialists, ophthalmologists, physicians etc.), therapists, counsellors, special educators, and related professionals across India and internationally too.
Have been conducting Teacher training sessions in mainstream and special schools and colleges to empower facilitators; and help them address individual learning needs of students since 1986; in Chennai, Bangalore and Kerala.
Parent guidance and support has been a major area of work – working with parents to address their concerns and enabling them to be active participants in the growth and development of their child in a creative and fun way.
Disability counselling for all aspects across the life span and networking with various professionals and disability groups to provide appropriate services to Persons with Disabilities (PWD) and their families has been a significant work across the years.
Accessing legal support as per Rights of Persons With Disabilities (RPWD) Act 2016 with support from the Human Rights / Disability Rights Groups in India. Creating disability rights awareness in society is a major area of work too.
Curriculum
Earth CoLab is an enterprise that explores new approaches to knowledge and learning, science and society and art practices – set in the natural world.
‘Place’ and ‘Interconnectivity’ are at the center of EARTH CoLab’s pedagogy.
Earth Colab’s work aims to highlight nodes at which disciplines intersect and create an interconnected view of every system, through curriculum design & creative science communication.
In our work with Earthlings Early Years we have pushed these boundaries – to reimagine learning and development in the early years.
This pedagogy interplays with the preconceived roles of ‘educator’ and ‘learner’ and investigates what it means to collectively build knowledge, uncover wonder and make meaning of every experience.
