India’s first moving conclave for humanity-centered design thinking
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Where Lived Community Wisdom Shapes Education
ROOTS is Vidhya Vidhai Foundation's Design for Education conclave: three days, once a year, always somewhere new. Each edition gathers a group of passionate individuals to ponder around a single question: what would it take to build a future worthy of the children who will inherit it? Working in education is not the entry requirement here. Taking the question seriously is.
This year, ROOTS moves to Coimbatore, a city with its own instinct for building things that last: in a handloom's rhythm, in the memory of an engineer, G.D.Naidu, who believed India could build its own machines, in communities that have kept their knowledge systems alive across generations. ROOTS borrows that instinct and turns it toward the future of children, carrying forward the questions it asked last year along Nagapattinam's coast, and turning them toward a sharper one: how do we design for a child's dignity and future, and who gets to decide what that future should mean?
Designing for every child’s Diginity and Future.
Ask what a child's future should hold, and most answers start with the world that's coming: new technology, new kinds of work, skills we are still understanding. Fewer answers start with the child. What do they want their future to be? And is a good future simply one where a child succeeds, or one where their success leaves something better behind for the people and world around them? ROOTS 2026 holds both halves of this in equal weight: the ground a child needs to stand on today, and the future they get to define for themselves from there.
The method borrows its name from a term the design theorist Don Norman coined: humanity-centered design. Where human-centered design asks what one user needs, humanity-centered design asks the wider version of that question: who else is affected, does this hold up over years rather than months, and is it built with a community rather than handed to one. ROOTS runs on exactly that discipline: check the root cause, consider the whole ecosystem, take the long view, and design with the people this is for, not around them.
Voices of ROOTS
What Awaits You?
Across three days, you'll sit with the present reality of children's lives today, alongside policymakers, practitioners, technologists, parents, and the makers and communities who call Coimbatore home. The conversation will move between two questions at once: what capability, exposure, and readiness does a child need for the world ahead, and what sense of dignity, belonging, and agency do they need to actually meet it. Neither gets to run ahead of the other.
Grounded Insights
From communities already living the questions this conclave asks.
A Fuller Definition
Of what "future-ready" means when readiness and dignity are examined together, not traded off against each other.
Stronger Network
A community that cares about the unanswered questions shaping a child’s dignity and future.
THE THREE-DAY JOURNEY
What are we actually preparing a child for?
A child learns both inside and outside the classroom, through academics and through life. That’s why dignity comes first, not as an add-on to future-readiness, but as its foundation. Spend the day listening to the people this work is for, learning from voices already shaping their own answers, and together explore what “future-ready” should mean when children get to define the future they dream of.
Is the system we've built actually built for that future?
Day Two trades data points for lived stories, conversations with people whose everyday lives hold knowledge no framework fully captures, set against a day steeped in the flavour, craft, and rhythm of the community hosting us. From there, the work turns practical: taking what this particular place and its people have to teach, and beginning to shape it into something worth building.
What's worth carrying back: a fixed answer, or a sharper question?
The finale opens the room outward. You'll pressure-test the idea you've been shaping, not to arrive at something finished, but to leave with real clarity on the question you're taking back into your own work. You'll sit alongside other showcases from the ground itself, including young people presenting as leaders in their own right, not as case studies of them. It closes not with applause for a solution, but with a room full of people carrying sharper questions than the ones they arrived with.
Who is this space for?
CSR Leaders and
Corporate Professionals
Looking to fuel something that outlasts a single project cycle.
NGO Founders and
Development Professionals
Working on education from the ground up, and tired of solutions that don't survive contact with reality.
Policy Professionals
Trying to close the distance between what's written into policy and what's lived by a child.
Educators & School Leaders
Rethinking what they're really preparing children for, beyond their own institution.
Technologists,
Designer & Creative Practitioners
Curious what their craft owes a child's dignity, not only their convenience.
Curious Minds from Any Field
Don't work in education, but can't stop thinking about what it owes the next generation.
Moments from ROOTS
Our Partners
Invest In Your Experience:
Great Ideas Deserve Access
Early-bird Registration
- – Sign up by October 2, 2026 to avail registration at just Rs. 6000
Full Fee: ₹7,500
- – 3 days of learning, stay, meals and local commute
- – Workshops, field immersions, shared experiences
FAQ's
By Train: Coimbatore Junction (CBE) is a major railway hub on the Southern Railway network with frequent express trains from Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, and other cities.
By Bus: Tamil Nadu State Transport and private operators run overnight buses from Bengaluru, Chennai, Kochi, and Madurai to Coimbatore.
By Road: Coimbatore is accessible via NH-544 (Kochi–Salem) and NH-83, making it easy to drive in from Bengaluru (~4.5 hrs), Kochi (~3 hrs), and other nearby cities.