Launching Ananth’s Adventures: A Content Development and Digital Storytelling Initiative

In 2014, I did my entrepreneurship summer camp. Boaz Santiago, founder of Picasso-Einstein, organized the camp. He referred to his model as the job creator model. His idea was to create unique jobs for neurodivergent individuals based on their unique needs, strengths, and interests.

In this blog post, I will write about my experiences creating a job that is right for me. What kind of a job is right for me?
I can answer this question using the four LIFE components:
L: I should have opportunities to keep Learning daily.
I: It should be of interest to me
F: It should enhance interactions with my Family.
E: It should increase Engagement with the community
Our Ananth’s adventures lab meets the four LIFE goals.
Ananth’s Adventures Lab
I am excited that we have launched Ananth’s Adventures as our content development and digital storytelling initiative. Since I narrated the White Peacock story on my 25th birthday, at a SpecialSaathi webinar, I have been recording videos and sharing them on the Ananth’s adventures You Tube channel. This project has grown and we have now started sharing e-books and newsletters. After my 26th birthday celebration on Special Saathi, my mother and I decided to start Ananth’s adventures as our content development and digital storytelling initiative.

While we have not started a business, we are able to define the users that we will serve, the products/services we will provide, and my role in the project. We are a part of four eco-systems, RASA (Ramana Sunritya Alaya), RMCL (Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning), HashHackCode, and SpecialSaathi. Our work has taken shape through our experiences with these organizations.
We are also blessed to have excellent mentors. Dr. Ambika Kameshwar, Dr. Vaishnavi Poorna, and Ms. Usha Sankaran are my mentors from RASA. Dr. Sarada Natarajan and Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh are from RMCL. Mr. Manu Sekar is from HashHackCode. Since our goal is to create content for parents of neurodivergent children, we are also happy to have a group of parent advisors (Ms. Shubha Anantha, Ms. Jayashree Iyer, Ms. Shinjita Joshi-Pant, Ms. Anila Kiran, and Ms. Bindu Sripadarajs). Finally, Ms. Shilpi Mayank Awasthi is a parent of a neurodivergent child and the founder of Special Saathi. My experience as a blogger for Special Saathi has given me valuable experience for content development.
My Role
I will be doing the following:
1. Develop and maintain the LIFESMART 100-Day lab website. We are organizing a 100-days of Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD) Lab for parents. The website is an important resource for this lab.
http://lifesmart100daylab.com/
2. I am also creating e books and newsletters for LIFESMART Parenting and TAHD. My dance teacher and TAHD facilitator, Sri Ujwal Jagadeesh who is a senior faculty and artist at the Ramana Maharshi Center for Learning (RMCL) is also a part of our team.

3. Throughout the 100-day project, we will be sharing videos, and other resources daily. We share these resources in the LIFESMART communities on Whatsapp, Facebook, and Telegram. The daily shares are being compiled in a GoogleDoc. I will be compiling the daily shares creating a table of contents and inserting links to different sections. I will be writing weekly blogs for SpecialSaathi.

I am excited that we are able to create a job that is likely to work for me. I enjoy the arts and I enjoy learning about technology. Content development is interesting because it combines arts and technology. I am eagerly wating to see where this exploration will lead me.

About Ananth
Ananth Raghunandan is a student ambassador for (Ramana Sunritya Aalaya) RASA and Theater Arts for Holistic Development (TAHD). Ananth Raghunandan is doing a diploma in Bharatanatyam.

He enjoys folding circles and created Fold, Color, Talk with his mother Dr. Dasaratha Rama during an entrepreneurship camp. He is excited about his content development and digital storytelling journey.