Rethinking Inclusiveness - Creating a PANDA Identity

Rethinking Inclusiveness - Creating a PANDA Identity

What do we mean by Organizational identity? How do we, as an entity, define ourselves? How do we know who we are? The answers to these questions can seem easy in the beginning. But as a group of people evolves as an organization, the answers may become complex and void. The answer to the question “Who are we?” is not limited to just selecting a certain goal, organizing a group of people and creating activities to achieve those goals. So how do you create an identity?

That’s precisely the question we as a PANDA asked ourselves. How do we know and create who we are? Our journey begins with a relatively simple and precise vision, to create an inclusive future. And how do we create an inclusive future? By bringing together a group of excellent leaders and assisting them in realizing their potential to create positive change in our society. But over the two years of our journey, we realized that our identity is somewhat vague. We don’t feel connected to our vision, with how we conduct our activities, how we achieve our goals. So we embarked on a journey to understand and secure a PANDA identity.

We understood the question of our identity focused on three critical points. Firstly, our purpose. We want to create an inclusive future but the question is what do we mean by inclusiveness and why do we want it. To explore the question, we went back to our roots. In the beginning, there were five friends. Five friends who used to have long friendly discussions in various topics of life. One day, after finishing our academics classes, we started a similar discussion with a specific theme - “What do we expect of a society from the development perspective?” We agreed that development isn’t development unless the benefits are equally distributed to all. There are should be no barriers there. But we see that there are different clusters that exist in society based on social identities. Development initiatives focuses on different clusters and the clusters have no connecting bridges among them. So we felt the need of designing development initiatives that adds value in creating bridges among the clusters. Thus the idea of creating an organization focused on inclusiveness sparked in our minds. Value is the second critical point.

When we revisited and became clear of our purpose and value once again, we focused on incorporating our culture as a PANDA into our identity. Because once we were clear on our purpose and value, we needed to create an inclusive culture among ourselves first. Because how can we create an inclusive future if we ourselves can’t practice inclusiveness. So we started connecting with individuals. Just like we connected with ourselves in the beginning by sharing our stories and experiences. And over the last 2 years, we have found a few excellent and brilliant PANDAs who resonated our visions of an inclusive future. The stories shared, the journeys made together made us who are today. Thus our third critical point, culture.

Integrating the three critical points into one identity required experience and deep understanding of who we are and who we want to be. Once the points were clear, we were sure that we have created our identity. We have to rethink inclusiveness as connecting with individuals rather than connecting with groups. We need to reach each and every soul equally and bring them under one blue PANDA sky. We connect through stories. This is our identity now. Where we shift towards an inclusive future, where we create leaders by connecting with individuals, sharing stories and creating our own, and bringing them under one blue sky.

Our journey has taught us many things. And as we enter our third year, we stand strong and resolute in our vision. Connect with us, share your own story on how you evolved as an individual/organization. Share your own identity and let us shift towards an inclusive future together.

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