Chennai:Ā A group of college students came together and initiated a start-up. Sounds familiar, right? But what these students at Warhorse, an organisation located at Anna Nagar, Chennai, do will not sound so common.
A few engineering, architecture and economics students, exhausted by the rote learning culture of the education system, decided to help facilitate better learning which prompted them to start Warhorse.
“The one thing we noticed among all of us was the fact that we had a distinct advantage over everybody else simply because we were better speakers. We realised the importance of effective communication and started off by conducting public speaking workshops in our fourth year and that later grew into a bigger idea,” said Sidhaanth Dharmadheeran, co-founder of Warhorse.
He believes that communication and critical thinking provide a skillset that act as your warhorse through life.
The journey from a workshop to a full-time organisation has been quite challenging, he said.
Without any formal training in nearly all aspects, and students fresh out of college trying to bring about a change was a situation. This was exactly what warhorse stands against, the fact that you need formal training to be successful.
“Our teachers are very relatable: they understand pop-culture and all our classes are gamified. Everything is a game – you gain and lose points, level-up and gain powers. We like to believe that this makes it very exciting for the kids and they do not want to leave our classes,” added Sidhaanth when asked about their teaching methodology.
Today, Warhorse has five branches (Kilpauk, Ashok Nagar, Alwarpet, Adyar and Anna Nagar) touching over 5,000 lives. Be it 7 or 70, everyone has something to learn here.
Warhorse teaches kids to analyse things by breaking them down to their fundamentals and asking the right questions and in general, be better versions of themselves.
The organisation wishes to influence the current education system as they firmly believe it is inefficient and correlates merit with marks.
“The entire system needs to be rethought. Humans need to be more human as most of the jobs and algorithmic work will be taken over by robots and Artificial Intelligence. The future requires us to be thinkers, learners, communicators and critical problem-solvers and that’s what the curriculum should focus on,” he believes.
Warhorse has helped certain schools modify their syllabus and aims to create it own curriculum some day.
Sidhaanth owes his success to his diverse team of movie buffs, pop-culture enthusiasts, stand-up comedians, MUNners and quizzers who, with their passion and dedication, strive each and every day to make the world a better learning space. He claims to have found a reason to jump out of bed every morning, his ikigai, through Warhorse.
Article by Hunar Mehta and Sakshi Shah