The Baithak Foundation Works to Measure Impact

 
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The Baithak Foundation Works to Measure Impact

Mandar Karanjkar, Co-founder and Lead Communications, Baithak Foundation

12-11-2024

As in many countries around the world, education has become a machine in India. This machine does a good job of building left-brain capabilities, but as Yale scholar Iain McGilchrist argues in his book The Master and His Emissary, our left brain is an exceptional servant but a very poor master. At the Baithak Foundation, this sentiment was more important than we ever realized. When we started working with traditional Indian music as a tool for holistic development of children, we were totally unaware that we were addressing the lack of stimuli and opportunities to develop the right brain in our educational system.

Understanding the parts of a harmonium. Photo: Baithak Foundation.

Founded in 2016, the Baithak Foundation works to provide students in India with equitable music access. Less than three percent of children in India’s public schools have systematic opportunities to know and learn any form of music—and, usually, those children are in higher-income communities. At Baithak, we bring local artists to nearby schools, thanks in part to the financial support of local organizations and companies. This serves two purposes: it provides music access and learning opportunities to children, and generates sustainable income sources for practitioners of traditional music.

As we started working with a larger number of schools and our funding needs grew, we were rightly asked about the impact of our work.

“After learning Kathak for a year, how much more creative the children have become?”

“Has the practice of Hindustani vocal music improved the quantitative aptitude of the children?”

“How much more sensitive the children are due to music exposure for two years?”

How do we answer these questions? Should we even get into answering these questions? In fact, capturing the impact of our work without compromising it has been our biggest challenge. We currently work with more than 3,000 children. Most of them get monthly exposure to music. Around 200 of them learn a vocal, instrumental, or dance form on a weekly basis. The question, then, is how do we capture the change these art forms are bringing about?

When we try to measure the velocity or location of an electron, the very act of measuring leads the electron to deviate from its actual position and velocity. We feel the same happens with arts. When you try to create a setup in which one measures the impact of art, that setup fundamentally changes the quality of the art.

The joy of playing a tanpura. Photo: Baithak Foundation.

A child with a brush in her hand or a child completely absorbed in singing with his Tanpura is definitely in a different state of being when the same child is painting or singing to pass an examination.

“The moment you know you are happy, you cease to be happy,” said J. Krishnamurti, an extraordinary Indian thinker who spoke all across the world. What Krishnamurti said about happiness also applies to art and music. Being absorbed in the practice of art or music can lead to a state where one loses themself. The moment you remember that you are practicing an art form, you are dragged into the world of thinking and reason.

In our experience, strictly relying on a social-emotional learning framework has not yielded results. First, music exposure and practice affects and benefits each child differently. In many of our concerts, children fall asleep. Initially, we wondered if they were finding it boring, but after a few interactions, we realized that many of them experience violence at home and are not able to sleep due to fear and other causes. In the presence of music, they immediately relax. How to capture this using any framework? Second, too many interventions can impede our ability to isolate what works and what doesn’t. On a deeper level, it may lead us to design our programming a certain way—where we focus on capturing impact rather than making impact.

A class of young learners leans in. Photo: Baithak Foundation.

Of course, a few methods have proven effective. Again and again, we have observed that if a supporter sees our intervention firsthand, they get a much better understanding of our program. They may respond to this observation period by suggesting which changes they would like to see over time—suggestions that, assuming they are healthy for the child, often make it easier to quantify our work. We have also had success capturing impact through responses shared in short-form videos, testimonials, and questionnaires.

Increasingly, our primary goal is to get supporters and beneficiaries in the same room and let them have a free conversation, where they can without us coming into the picture. Small gestures like this have helped us win donor trust in a big way.

An arts experience might open doors to creativity, sensitivity, sustained joy, and imagination—or it might not do anything beyond momentary happiness. These experiences are pure potential, influenced by how we communicate, listen, and respond to a child’s needs. There is plenty of research highlighting the benefits of music practice on individuals and communities—our challenge is in measuring this change.

That has been our biggest challenge, anyway. We would love to hear from other organizations, music practitioners, and teachers who have addressed this challenge in their own work!

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