A retrospective is not about looking back to close the book. It’s about pausing long enough to notice what has been shaping us, and to ask which patterns and questions are asking to be carried forward.
Over the past two weeks, we’ve shared reflections from BM Stills, a space within Bachpan Manao where we hold what doesn’t always fit into reports or frameworks. The essays are not conclusions. They are invitations to see differently: to sit with questions, to take play seriously, to notice what often goes overlooked, to amplify voices that carry care, and to imagine futures that are shared.
Each day, we opened a new thread:
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Day 1 | Questions: Where it all begins. Children’s questions, caregivers’ questions, and the act of asking itself as the anchor of CollabAction.
How do we hold questions as generative, not problems to solve.
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Day 2 | Play: Before alphabets and arithmetic, play is the serious work of childhood. A look at Voices of Play, melas, masterclasses, and the many shapes play takes.
What if play was seen not as extra, but as the foundation of learning and joy?
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Day 3 | Observations: The slow practice of noticing: Leaves in Pockets, Slate scribbles, photobooks, and seasons of care.
What do we see when we slow down enough to notice what children already know?
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Day 4 | Voices: What we hear when lullabies, librarians, BM8 Talks, newsletters, and children themselves speak into the ecosystem.
How do we make space for voices that carry early childhood but often go unheard?
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Day 5 | Care: The everyday scaffolding that holds childhood together: from festivals and summers to monsoons and coffee estates, from resilient parenting to shifting family structures.
What can we learn when we see care as infrastructure, not just as individual effort?
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Day 6 | Futures: Carrying it all forward: Sabhas and Tyohaars as gathering grounds, masterclasses as exchanges of practice, BM8 Talks as provocations, and the Playground as a shared archive. Because futures are not abstract, they are lived in the air, water, and care children inherit.
What futures become possible when care, play, and possibility are treated as abundance?
Together, these threads remind us that childhood is not an afterthought. It is infrastructure. An investible responsibility.
And if there is one thing the retrospective has shown us, it is this: care, play, and possibility already exist in abundance. Our work is to notice them, name them, and nurture them into futures, together.
Thank you for being part of this retrospective, and part of this journey. Stay tuned for what’s next.
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