Pre Summit 2020

An informal meet up organized before Pehia Summit 2020

My sincere thanks to my partner in crime Anusree for organizing Pehia Pre-summit Meet up.

Initially, I was thinking about organizing a day workshop on 25th Jan 2020. In such a short time frame it was difficult to finalize a topic and find speakers for the workshop. Anusree put forth the idea of having an informal meetup before the summit. I had the wow feeling inside me when she explained how she wants the meetup to be. We kept it open for everyone(all women), working in all fields. We were encouraging our members to bring their mothers to the event.

Anusree has put her cent percentage for organizing such a fruitful informal meetup, I must say. The creative memes she has come up with was so amazing. There are a few more memes that we didn’t publish due to lack of time. Here I would like to share those and wish I could get some honest feedback on her creatives.

Why did we want to do an informal meetup?

Community is all about providing an inclusive environment, right? If an individual starts feeling that this community is not for them., then what happens? If the community is not addressing its member's issues properly, what is the purpose of the community then?

These questions led us to have an informal meet up to connect with our members. It was more like listening to them about their expectations from Pehia as a community. We started Pehia Foundation to encourage women to code more, attend events more and boost their confidence so that they become self-aware about their ability and capacity to achieve their dreams.

Pehia's Pre-summit meetup, it was not a supersized meetup but a set of diverse people can in and around Kochi came to talk about their dreams. It was a three-hour meetup. I do remember the face of a few attendees. They were nervous, not talking at all. They were confused about the event, that what's going to happen here? Is this a class? What we are going to talk about etc.

What I had in mind for them was to give a community where they feel that it's theirs. I wanted them to ask me at the end of the meetup that is there any tickets left to register for the Pehia Summit. I wanted them to feel the fire inside each team member of Pehia and get inspired by them to do more, to learn more.

We spend the last thirty minutes discussing the struggles they are facing to pursue their dreams, be it at home, college, or in the society. Faheena, an MSc rank holder who is struggling to come back to her career. I'm sure she has inspired everyone in the room. She acknowledged the level of confort she felt with the Pehia team.

That was all we wanted. Provide our members with a comfortable space where then can open-up their stories and listen to other's stories as well.