Transcription

• Speaker #0

  Guess what? I'm moving country again. I don't know, maybe a year, maybe more. Where's the phone? The phone's everywhere. I'm an expat. Hi, it's Pauline. Welcome to a new episode of Meet the Expats. Today I meet with Rekha Nagaran. who is currently based in Montenegro for the past few months, has lived abroad and moved towards education and she is the co-founder of Boundless Life, which is, I mean, she's definitely going to be talking about it, but a company who enables families to live a nomadic life and live abroad with their children and entire family. Ayreka, how are you?

• Speaker #1

  Good, Pauline. Thank you for having me.

• Speaker #0

  Well, great to have you. I'm excited to hear more about this program for families and to hear a little bit more of your experience abroad and what brought you to this company. I'll let you introduce yourself briefly and then we'll move on to your journey.

• Speaker #1

  Sure. So my name is Rekha Magan. I am, like Pauline said, one of the co-founders of Boundless Life. and I'd say, I guess, my living abroad experience or expat experience started when I was, I mean, very young. My parents used to take us to meditation retreats in different parts of the world since I was a kid. So that kind of gave me a little bit of a taste of travel and, you know, living abroad and really giving back to like a local community. But just little tiny doses. And then when I went to university, I was born and raised in Montreal. I went to McGill and I had this itch for travel, you know, very young. I did a student exchange program within my second year of university and I went to Singapore and studied at NUS for a semester. And it just opened my eyes to, you know, how amazing it is to live in another country, how much there is to learn, all the different experiences. And I traveled a lot while I was in Singapore on my own. And I think that was really when I was like, oh, like when I have my own family and my own kids, I want them to live abroad and I want them to experience all these amazing things. I'm only now tasting, you know, in my university years. So I guess for me, that's kind of the beginning of my nomadic lifestyle.

• Speaker #0

  OK, so where it started. So you had that first touch with your parents in the end, small pieces, as you were saying, meditation retreats. But then the studying years brought you out. yeah yeah exactly okay and so how did you once you finished your studies how did you continue traveling or work towards that life of I want to live abroad I want my family to be able to live abroad later yeah so then I mean when I got married you know I wanted

• Speaker #1

  I took my husband to like Chiang Mai like one of the areas that I loved when I visited Thailand And, um... And then, you know, told them, oh, when we have kids, we got to come back here with our kids and stay here for an extended period of time. So when my kids were, I guess, four and two, we went back to Shanghai. Yeah. And lived in like this, you know, tiny town in an apartment for about a month and a half. And they were at that age, they were four and two. And I just saw how much even at that tender age, they evolved as like human beings. You know, when we came back to Montreal. I could see the difference in them. Like my family members could see the difference. Our extended families were like, oh my God, they had so much to talk about. They were so much more confident. It really felt like they evolved at such a young age and just with a month and a half abroad. And for me, that's, I think, really when I experienced how powerful it is for kids to be in a new environment that's outside of their comfort zone. And I think as parents, we tend to... We tend to be driven by fear, you know, like, oh, I don't want to like, I'm scared. What is this going to do to them? And it was the first time it gave me the opposite experience that, oh, my God, this is actually unleashing something, you know, that nothing, no other experience could really bring them. So it kind of wet my palate to what the possibilities are and if that fear in the, you know. right at the bud that, hey, I don't want to operate out of fear. Otherwise, I would have never done something like this. I want to operate out of wonder, you know, and that's, I'd say, as a family unit, when we really started saying, okay, I think I want to do stuff differently.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I mean, it's pretty, it's quite amazing to see them involved and see what's happening, the new personalities and traits that come out. But I think it's really brave also to say, well, let's embrace this, let's do more. and also allow yourself and your lifestyle to go go with that also so what were you you and your husband working in to also allow you to travel so much and maybe go abroad for one two three months yeah I mean at that point my husband was working for himself you know he's an entrepreneur as well so he

• Speaker #1

  had you know the flexibility to to to make his own schedule um I was working on my first business. My first business was bringing mindfulness into the school system. So I as well, you know, as an entrepreneur, had that kind of flexibility to set our own hours. So I think that definitely helped. And when we first started traveling as a family, I think we also quickly saw how hard it was at the same time to maintain a sense of rhythm, a sense of connection, especially for our kids. The traditional school system or the traditional society is not built around movement, right? You're either in school or you're not. You're either at home or you're abroad. There's just very little flexibility in between those two ends of the spectrum. And that's when we realized that it's not just us. There are other families as well, like ourselves. that want to be able to explore the world yet also stay rooted in something meaningful and have some sort of rhythm in this experience and i would say that kind of awareness or realization is what was the seed for boundless life um right with that friction of like this desire to grow and discover and explore the families who travel, but also the need for... structure and community and purpose. And for us, we weren't trying to escape the traditional system. I think we just realized that, oh, the system is not built for the way our family wants to live. So instead of trying to escape it or run away from it, we were about, yeah, let's create it. Let's reimagine what this can look like. We wanted something that was a lot more intentional and a lot more connected. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And so what, I want to say, what was the trigger or the, the aha moment that said, okay, well, this is, this is it. This is what we're building or.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I would say it was, you know, there's like, I talked about that fear, right? Like that fear is always kind of was always underlying in me. And so I did like initially send my, my son, who's our oldest child. You know, when he turned six, you know, we sent him to the school down the street, the public school down the street. We'd built this house, you know, so that he could go to the school and be walking distance from it. And when he started kindergarten, you know, he was always a very, like, spirited, full of love, empathetic, curious, love of learning type of child. And our experience is that he entered this school system. And within days, it just felt... as a mother I felt like I could see that spark in him and that like curiosity and that joy of learning and loving was was just slowly slipping away from him I don't know how to explain it but I could feel like yeah something was living yeah something was leaving in it and it just to me that just like ignited something in me that I'm like whoa like I cannot I cannot lose the spark of my child to some system that doesn't even align with what I think we should be doing or how we should be learning. So for me, it was really, that was the trigger that, and it was, it was, it was still tricky because, you know, he was okay. He was doing fine. His teachers liked him. He had friends, like everything was going okay on the outside of things. Yeah. But just inside I felt like oh something has shifted here and I just I can't let that spark in him go. So that was, for me, the trigger that, you know, caused me to look at everything differently and see, how else could we do this?

• Speaker #0

  All right. Okay, well, let's talk a little bit more about Founders Life. What's the concept? How does it work?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, sure. So I think, you know, like I was saying, being abroad initially taught us as a family that, you know, travel for us wasn't just about sightseeing. It was about immersing ourselves into something deeper. We craved for, you know, deeper relationships with the people around us, with the culture that we were visiting. And, you know, tried to start to think, okay, how can our children actually learn differently through these experiences? So Boundless Life became the answer to, hey, how can we live, how can we learn and grow in a way that feels wholesome and not fragmented? So initially I had kind of studied. all the different education systems out there. So I studied Montessori and Waldorf and Reggio Emilio and the Finnish system. And what I liked about the Finnish system is that I saw that education was prioritizing well-being first. It gave this space for children to be curious and not just focused on performance. It was much more student-centered, child-led in a way that felt deeply human to me, you know, less about testing, more about learning how to think, how to feel, how to contribute. So Boundless Life for me stemmed with, hey, how can we look at education differently? I didn't want education to be something separate from life. I felt like at the core of me, I felt like education needs to be life itself, where Instead of just reading about things, you know, kids are actually walking through the history of land.

• Speaker #0

  Experiencing.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, they're experiencing it. They're participating in real world decisions, you know. And that's, to me, that's when learning sticks, right? When you're, it's purposeful. It's linked to real world experiences. Those are the things that light children up. So I wanted to create a model where learning didn't stop when you left the classroom. It actually followed you everywhere that you went. So at Boundless, we basically built an education system that moves with the child, not against them. So it's not a one size fits all. We really kind of drive everything by asking, hey, what lights you up? What does this place, what can this place teach us? How can we grow together so that education feels a lot more alive? That was the education component of it. So what we realized is that, you know, in order for families to live abroad and to slow travel and immerse themselves in a new culture, they needed a school to send their children to. So we build an education center. And then we also provide apartments so parents can live abroad and everything within a 10 minute walking radius. And then we build a co-working space as well so that parents can. parents like ourselves who are entrepreneurs or can work remotely have the flexibility to work in one of our co-working space and we also offer experiences so that you know when you're in Tuscany you're learning Italian language and you're learning how to make fresh pasta and you know going for different excursions so it's more of kind of like a turnkey solution for families who want to live abroad where we provide housing for a few months or

• Speaker #0

  How long would be the average trip? Is it a couple of weeks, months, a year?

• Speaker #1

  We have different cohorts. So all of our destinations run on the same schedule. So during the academic school year, we run three three month cohorts. So families stay with us for three months and everyone starts on the same day, ends on the same day. So there's this kind of instantaneous community building that happens. And then we have those are our academic. months and then we also have a one month program in the summer a one month in July a one month in August that run more like a summer camp okay yeah got it okay so yeah it's really the full full experience

• Speaker #0

  and full immersion for and so the kids all start together at school they have this duration all together and in terms of so you're saying the education style is really day you grow with them, they learn by doing. I was in a very traditional school, so it's difficult for me to understand what a day would look like for the kids in that.

• Speaker #1

  this type of school would you would you have any examples that would be able to shed a light for people like me the normal school system yeah sure so um all of our boundless education systems education centers um they're really created in a way so that they're um the look and feel of each destination is the same so regardless of what location you go to we now have seven locations We're at... Portugal, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Spain, and Uruguay, and opening our eighth hopefully in January. And each of those education centers have the same look and feel. So same furniture, same posters on the wall, same schedule. And that schedule looks like it's a full day of school. So the kids come in around 8.30. They start their day at 8.45. and it goes till 3 30 and across all destinations they start their day with 15 minutes of what we call connection time and that's where um we really do like exercises on mindfulness social and emotional learning uh character development um better trying to better understand yourself as well as connect with your peers in the group so all locations start with that and then um the group moves into what we call mastery time. So their kids are working on their core subjects, math, English, science. And then they work on something called a quest. So a quest is a project-based learning unit. And all of the locations are working on a similar quest at the same time. So the quests are based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. So each cohort is focusing on one SDG. And the reason we do these projects that are based on real world problems is because we want our children to be using the concepts that they learn in mastery time and then applying it to a real world problem. So they can see, hey, why is long division? Why do I need to learn long division? Well, with your vision, you can help us solve, you know, world hunger by, you know, figuring out how to divide. all of our resources by the number of people that we need to feed. So really kind of taking real world problems and using interdisciplinary learning to apply concepts to those world problems. So that's how we make learning a lot more relevant, a lot more purposeful. And then we have different elements throughout the day as well. So it's throughout the week. So we have a special unit that's based just on culture time. So really immersing our kids in the country. and the culture of the country that they're in, whether that's learning the local language or, you know, doing Portuguese tile painting when they're in Portugal or maybe learning Greek dance when they're in Greece. In Italy, they learned how to make, you know, fresh pasta or fresh pizza. So really giving them a deep dive into the specific culture. And then every second Friday of our schedule across all destinations, The entire education center is out on a field trip. So really getting the kids out of the classroom and into the local community so that they can experience the things that they're learning. And then I would say another thing, two things that make our education system unique is we do something called Boundless Time, which is another project based unit where all of the kids have a designated time throughout the week where they can work on. a passion project on something that lights them up. So it's kind of modeled over on, you know, Google's approach. Yeah, the 20% where all employees have to work on something that they're passionate or learn about something that they're passionate about. So we do the same thing with our students, right? We dedicate a certain amount of time every week so that they can learn about something that really lights them up themselves. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then another thing that's been really powerful is we have another once a week class called Endeavor Time. And Endeavor Time is where we allow the community members that are staying with us. So the parents that are part of the Boundless community to come into the classroom and share something that lights them up. You know, something that they're passionate about with our group of kids. And that's something that I've always been really passionate about because I think. There's so much learning that can happen beyond just a teacher or an educator, right? Really, everyone can be our teacher. And our boundless community of, as you know, you know, nomadic people who are living life differently, trying different things. they have so much to offer themselves in terms of knowledge. And I believe there's a lot of power and inspiration that comes when you hear about something from someone who's deeply passionate about that. So if we have, you know, somebody come in who's super passionate about AI or passionate about, you know, building robots or whatever it is that they do that lights them up and they talk to our kids about that. that passion, that spark, you never know what seed is being planted just by exposing them to something beyond what a typical educator can expose them to. So every week we have that built into to our model as well. And it's been incredible to see, you know, the different lessons that parents can bring in based on their own zone of genius and what knowledge they can impart. So on on yeah Overall, that's kind of how the day rolls. So it's from 8.30 to 3.30. And then we also offer extracurricular activities at each location after school. So in Greece, they learn, you can register your kids to learn sailing. In Portugal, they learn they can have surfing lessons. In Montenegro, they're doing scouts, boy scouts in the, you know, mountains right at the foothill of, you know, near their school. So. a lot of really unique opportunities to learn extra skills based on what country they're in. Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  definitely. It's a great model. It's super interesting. And I like that last project you were talking about, about the parents who come in, share their knowledge, gets them also involved with all the kids and builds really that sense of community. And so moving back to the parents, I guess they...

• Speaker #1

  get to meet each other also and so meet like-minded people in the same area on the same rhythm at the same time absolutely i mean the community part of boundless um i think anyone will tell you who's who's done a boundless cohort that is is the magic um it's kind of this it brings this automatic sense of belonging no matter what country or time zone you're in um the boundless community of the people that come together end up building these real deep relationships with people across the globe that you would never typically really interact with, right? Unless you're in a situation like this. So the whole experience becomes not just about travel, but around shared growth, right? Because you're all entering this new country with your children. You don't know anybody. And you're all having these brand new shared experiences, whether it's, hey, how do I find, you know, tomato paste in Couture, Montenegro? I can't find anything. And looking at, you know, different stores and trying to figure it out together with these other groups of families. It really brings everybody together. And we have like this big emphasis that in making sure that we, everything we do is grounded in our core values. So our values as an organization is... family, connection, growth, optimism, and impact. And these values show up, you know, not only in how we design curriculum or choose our destinations or support families, but because they're so ingrained in what we do, you end up attracting a lot of like-minded individuals who have the same values.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, same values, of course.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. And therefore they can, you know, the connections that they make are much deeper and much more impactful. in a really short period of time.

• Speaker #0

  Nice. Very interesting. And do you have specific nationalities that would come more than others or you find that it's completely international and across the globe?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. I mean, I think we have a lot of families that come from the States, right? So the USA and Canada, living a European life for a few months is always very appealing to North American families like ourselves. So I'd say about 60% of the families are either from the U.S. or from Canada. And then the other 40% is a spread across different countries. So we've had, you know, families from Mexico, from Poland, from Israel, from Italy, from France. There's a good spread. Argentina, you know, is a spread of different families. And it's so beautiful, to be honest, to share cohorts with families from different countries. Like I remember. when we did our cohort in Italy, in Tuscany. In a lot of our boundless buildings, like the apartment we have, we'll rent an entire building so that all of our families can live in the same building. So when we were in Tuscany... um our neighbors one of the boundless families was from israel and my son every friday you know they would invite him over to have shabbat dinner with him uh with their family every friday and it was wonderful he was part of like their you know shabbat dinner we're like a few weeks into the cohort you know he's using he's come home from school and he's using all these words i'd never heard of and i was like wow you know like you're really learning a lot of italian it's amazing Right, here we are in a... And he looks at me, he's like, that's not Italian, it's Hebrew. And I realized that not only are children learning from the country that we're in, but they're also learning from the other families. Yeah, that they're spending so much time with. So he's still never been to Israel, but he has a deep appreciation for Shabbat bread, and he knows how to speak Hebrew a little bit. And those experiences, Somehow they don't happen when we're back home. I don't know why when we're back home, I think we fall back into the routine of our daily lives and, you know, going either, I'll either go to my brother's house or I'll go to my friend's house.

• Speaker #0

  Less curiosity.

• Speaker #1

  Less curiosity, less opening the door to people you don't know and, you know, like really making an effort to get to know families that are different than yourself. But in an environment like this, where you're full of a group of nomads, Yeah. You're just, it's so serendipitous and easy to spend time with people from different parts of the world. And I find in that in itself, just the company you're keeping, you know, you're learning so many different perspectives. And hey, why does this family think so differently than ours? And let's listen and understand, like, why do they think differently? And I think even from a brain's perspective, like the amount of neuroplasticity that happens when you're... spending time with people that are different than you and you're experiencing new things, your brain actually expands. Your prefrontal cortex starts operating at a much different level. So I think it's not just beneficial for the families and the parents, but for the kids as well. Everybody is growing together as a unit.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. No, no, it's a... as soon as you start meeting completely different cultures, you're out of your comfort zone, but you're learning constantly, constantly, constantly and adapting and picking up things on. And I think there's also a different way of seeing things you're, you're opening up to new perspectives, new ways of doing it. And it just opens your mind and the way you approach problems or life or anything in general.

• Speaker #1

  Absolutely. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Alright. Is there anything else you want to add on Boundless Life?

• Speaker #1

  It's something that you have to experience first hand to really understand how impactful it could be for a family unit. We've grown really quickly, really fast and I think beyond Boundless Life. It's not just restricted to, you know, doing what we're doing. I think even within a lot of families or parents say, oh, I can't, I can't travel with my kids or I can't do this with my kids. I hear that a lot. Yeah, I think like the message from my end is just whether it's with Boundless Life or just doing it on your own, like open your door to new possibilities, right? And obviously it's not cheap to travel and, you know, it comes with a cost as well. But I think... Pushing yourself to do something different and try something new. And even if you can travel to just, how could you bring, you know, different cultures and different people into your own home? Maybe it's, you know, every week I'm going to try, I'm going to try making a dish from a different country with my kids. Or I'm going to once a month invite a family from a completely different culture over for dinner. just so that you're starting to expand. the horizons and perspectives of your children to different cultures and different people. I think it's such a huge gift that you could give your kids in terms of global citizenship. Even if you can't leave or get on a plane, there are ways that we could bring that into our daily living, even back home. And I just highly encourage parents to take... the effort to try it takes effort i'm not i'm not joking when i go back home i go back into my cocoon as well um but i think um if we can make the effort it really goes a long way you know not just in our own children but just in the future generation of

• Speaker #0

  kids that we're raising, right? The more we expose our kids to different cultures, to different beliefs, and then highlight, help highlight for them the common thread that really connects us all. You know, I think the more, the more countries we live in, the more people we're exposed to. The biggest realization I've had is that, hey, at the end of the day, we're all one. We all have. We're all here. We're all human. And if we could highlight those similarities for our children, I think there would be a lot more unity in the world and a lot less, you know, just frustration and war and pain. Yeah. That's my kind of message is just to find the similarities. Yeah. Open up and find the similarities. Exactly. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Great. Okay, well, let's finish up on your recommendations then. I don't know which country or city you want to do them for.

• Speaker #0

  Sure. Can I do multiple different ones? Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  I'll leave it up to you to choose one destination maybe. We start with either a bar or a cafe, a restaurant, and the last one is a carte blanche. It's part of your choice. It can be really anything from...

• Speaker #0

  a beach to a yoga studio to a hairdresser whatever sure um okay in terms of like cafe uh that i love um there's i we so we spent multiple cohorts in bali i love southeast asia and there's a cafe in obud called zeth um it's this all vegan spot that's kind of tucked away into the treetops Nice. These views of the forest. and it just has this vibe that invites you to slow down and you know it's the kind of place where you can write read or work from reflect or just be and i love i love like spaces like that where they integrate nature um with with the cafe or the restaurant so that was definitely one of my favorite cafes i would say in terms of restaurant um in uh portugal there's a place called sourdough No, sorry, sole dough pizza that makes sourdough, a fresh sourdough, family fun, humble, full of heart restaurant. You can just taste it. The food is made out of love. You kind of bless it before they even serve it. And it's just such a wholesome place where you walk in kind of feeling like a guest, but feeling like family.

• Speaker #1

  At home.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, I love little places like that. And then a carte blanche. Let me see. Gosh, I'm a sunset lover. So I love chasing sunsets. They fill me up so much. I would say, you know, one of the cliffs in Syros, our Greece destination is on an island in Syros. I'm just watching the sunset from one of those cliffs. For me, that's like my reset button. You know, it's that quiet, powerful, makes me wide open where I can kind of just stop. Yeah,

• Speaker #1

  you forget everything during the day. Exactly. Just on the moment.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah, everything just, you know, washes away. And it also reminds me just how beautiful it is to have the freedom to live like a nomad, right? Like, you know, you're catching a sunset. We're all looking at the same sun. But, you know, to be able to see it from so many different places at so many different parts of the year, I feel super, so much gratitude to just. watch the sunset and appreciate the freedom that we have to be able to, to enjoy it.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. And last, I always end my interviews on the expat song. So what would be a song that resonates with your personal journey or with band is life?

• Speaker #0

  Let me think. Okay. I mean, one song, it might, my kids think I'm cheesy, but the one song I always go back to that I love. It's a song by India Ari. It's called I Am Light. And I just think this song is everything. You know, it's a reminder that we're not labels, we're not roles, we're not expectations. All of us are just light. And that light is in everyone that we meet, everyone that we serve. And like I mentioned before, it reminds me that we're all really connected, you know, and if we can focus on. each other's light, I think the whole planet would be a lot more.

• Speaker #1

  um lit up yeah yeah yeah lovely beautiful i mean i love this conversation really full of meaning um i mean the purpose you have behind boundless life is is really empowering it's nice to to hear people with that passion and that will to connect uh people to to see what's out there and just to bring the kids as soon as possible on that journey um really a full mindset and really goes beyond education, I feel. So super interesting. Thank you for sharing. We'll link the website and any social media or other links in the comments, of course. And guys, if you enjoyed the episode, please put a rating on Apple Podcast or Spotify. And as usual, you can find all the details, all the links of the places we mentioned in the comments and all the updates on Instagram.