What a Moment Can Become
A single encounter is not a strategy. But sometimes it changes what people believe may be possible. What happens next depends on whether that possibility finds people and structures capable of carrying it forward.
In April 2023, during a journey through Bihar, I met an eleven-year-old girl named Priyanka. We barely shared a language, and our encounter was one among many during weeks spent visiting schools, villages and communities. Yet I remembered her.
What stood out was not something she told me, but the way she approached me. While many of the children were understandably curious and reserved, Priyanka seemed unusually open. At one point, she simply took me by the arm and brought me to her father to introduce us.
At the time, it was a small moment. Three years later, I see it differently.
Priyanka in April, 2023
What We Cannot See at the Beginning
When we first encounter someone, we rarely know what may follow. We do not know which conversations will matter, which relationships will continue or which possibilities may emerge from something that initially seems insignificant.
At the time, there was no grand strategy built around Priyanka. There was an encounter with a girl living in a small community beside a highway, in a place where access to meaningful education was severely limited.
Later that year, together with our local partner Prabhat, we helped establish a supplementary learning centre serving children from her community and the surrounding area. The goal was practical: to create access to learning that could help children continue their education and eventually reach opportunities that had previously seemed distant.
When we spoke with Priyanka again approximately two years later, however, we learned that something else had happened as well.
The earlier visit had apparently been noticed throughout the community. Someone had travelled a long distance, spent time there, spoken with a girl and her father and taken their lives and aspirations seriously. According to those working locally, the encounter contributed to a growing interest in education among other children and families.
It is important not to exaggerate what a single visit can do. An encounter does not build a school, train a teacher, provide books or remove generations of social exclusion. But neither should we underestimate what can happen when people who have rarely experienced recognition from outside their immediate world suddenly feel seen and taken seriously.
Sometimes a possibility becomes more real simply because someone else treats it as real.
Three Years Later
In early 2026, I returned to Bihar and met Priyanka again.
The cheerful and curious girl I remembered was still recognisable, but her role had changed. She had begun speaking during community events attended by hundreds of people, continued pursuing her own education and supported younger children around her. Her ambition to become a doctor had remained.
What struck me most was not a dramatic transformation from one person into another. It was the continuity. Something that had already been visible in 2023 had found room to develop.
That development was not the result of one encounter. It involved Priyanka’s own determination, her family, local people who had remained present for years, teachers and social workers, a place to learn and people willing to organise, travel, teach and continue. Her mother, in particular, continued supporting her education despite pressures within the wider social environment.
Another connection had continued as well.
A member of the Prabhat team had accompanied that first encounter in 2023. He later helped make our online conversation with Priyanka possible, bringing the necessary technology to the community and helping bridge language and context. In 2026, I met him again — this time in Mangalore, far from the place where our paths had first crossed.
Three years after that first meeting in Bihar, we found ourselves in a very different setting, still connected and discussing what might come next.
There is something important in that continuity. Meaningful connections do not always develop in straight lines, and they do not need constant contact to remain meaningful. People meet in one context, reconnect in another and sometimes discover that what began years earlier has not only survived, but created new possibilities.
The encounter with Priyanka may have mattered. But the wider ecosystem made continuation possible.
This distinction has become increasingly important in much of our work.
A moment can create attention. A connection can change perspective. Someone can begin to imagine a future differently. But if nothing exists around that possibility, the moment can disappear as quickly as it arrived.
Connection can create possibility. Structure gives possibility somewhere to go.
Three years later: Priyanka speaking during a community event in Bihar (2026).
When One Story Becomes More Than One Story
Priyanka’s story is becoming increasingly difficult to describe as only her story.
When a girl from a community in which educational opportunities have historically been severely restricted speaks publicly in front of hundreds of people, younger children see something they may not have seen before. When a family makes a different decision about a daughter’s education, that decision becomes visible to other families. When someone who was expected to remain at the margins begins helping younger children learn, possibility acquires a face.
That does not mean one person transforms an entire community, and it would be unfair to place that responsibility on her.
But people can become reference points. They can make an abstract possibility visible: someone from here can do this. Perhaps this path exists for others too.
This is one reason why I have become increasingly interested in creating meeting points rather than thinking only in terms of programmes. Education, technology, biodiversity projects, universities, internships and economic opportunities all matter. But tools and programmes do not exist in isolation. They become meaningful through the people and connections around them.
Sometimes change begins before there is a programme for it.
The harder question is what we build around that beginning so it has a chance to continue.
One Encounter Is Not a Strategy
Looking back, I do not believe that one meeting in 2023 changed Priyanka’s life. Her story is far too complex, and too many people have contributed to her journey, for such a simple conclusion.
But I also no longer believe the encounter was insignificant. Perhaps both things can be true.
A single encounter is not a strategy. It cannot replace education, reliable local relationships, infrastructure or long-term commitment. But sometimes an encounter changes what someone believes may be possible — including the people who came believing they were there mainly to observe and learn.
Three years after our first meeting, I watched the same girl who had once taken me by the arm and introduced me to her father stand in front of a much larger community.
And three years after first meeting one of the people accompanying that journey, I found myself sitting with him again on the other side of India, discussing what might come next.
Neither moment was the transformation. But both became part of something that continued.
The village
Priyanka’s full story continues on India Child Care e.V. It includes our first encounter in Bihar, a later interview in which she speaks in her own words about her education, family, ambitions and community, and our reunion three years later.
This note is based on encounters and developments between 2023 and 2026 across Bihar and Mangalore, and reflects a personal perspective on how connections can evolve into possibilities over time. The full story of Priyanka and the work surrounding her is documented by India Child Care e.V.
From Curiosity to Connection to Change · If this note sparked a thought or a new perspective, we’d be delighted to continue the conversation. Every exchange, collaboration and contribution helps build meaningful connections across cultures.