Ishani Shah-Verdia

After having completed her chartered accountancy from Ahmedabad, Ishani started her career with Ernst & Young in Mumbai and the stint lasted for a year till getting married and shifting base to Udaipur. Ishani’s heart and passion have been elsewhere: she always had a strong urge to inculcate life skills in young adults and, with this intention, founded Flurn in 2011 in Udaipur; ever since its inception, Ishani has been conducting workshops for young children.

 

Her early childhood explorations began with her motherhood. When her daughter was 5 months old, Ishani read about the life-transforming tools on respectful parenting by Magda Gerber and her life started evolving. She found answers to the questions that had been haunting her throughout the growing up years. 

 

As she introspected about her own life journey and what she had been learning, a realisation dawned upon her that if we need to change the world, we need to re-imagine how we treat our infants and toddlers. 

 

She commenced facilitating process-art workshops and Kids Life Studio workshops for the youngest children before co-founding Sahaj in Udaipur. Sahaj is her activism, it is her way of defending the child’s right to play, it is her way of advocating for a more equal world for children. It is her reform project to transform the world by gifting secure, loving, trustful, joyful formative years to children. When she observes children learn naturally and joyfully at Sahaj, it gives her an assurance that the young children of today will create a ripple effect in the world by upholding the democratic principles of Sahaj while leading a happy and content adult life ahead.

 

Her experience of being a conscious parent has inspired her to conduct parent cafes, listening circles in Udaipur, Calicut and Bangalore. At Sahaj, she continues to work with parents by empowering them with highly effective and useful tools to be respectful and conscious parents.