Where this began
Shukraana.
A few years ago, our founder flew to Bangalore with no agenda. Just curiosity. He had heard about the India Inclusion Summit and wanted to see how others organised a gathering with purpose.
He spent eight hours in a room. He left a different person.
“The feeling I walked out with was not inspiration. It was not motivation. It was gratitude. A deep, quiet, overwhelming gratitude for everything I had taken for granted my entire life.”
In Urdu and Hindi there is a word for that feeling. Shukraana. Gratitude so complete it changes what you do next.
That is where ABLE begins. Not from a strategy meeting. Not from a trend report. From eight hours in Bangalore. From one word. From a decision made knowing it would cost something.
People on this planet living with some form of disability.
Many have never sat in a classroom. Many who did were never truly seen. This year, Global Ed-Fest is dedicated to them. Not with sympathy. Not with charity. With conviction. The conviction that every child is able of something extraordinary when the system stops being the barrier.
The partnership
A father. A son. A movement.
Ferose V R leads a team of thirty-five thousand people at SAP Labs in the United States. He is one of the most accomplished technology leaders in the world.
Every year, without fail, he flies from the US to India, delivers the India Inclusion Summit, and flies back.
He does this because of his son Vivaan. Vivaan is autistic. And Ferose took the most personal thing in his life and turned it into a movement that changes thousands of people every year.
Global Ed-Fest 2026 is officially partnered with the India Inclusion Foundation. Ferose will be in Jaipur in August. And this event will tell the world openly and proudly that it is inspired by what he built.
Because the inclusion conversation must reach school leaders. That is where it truly begins. In the classroom. In the school gate that is or is not wide enough. In the teacher who does or does not know how to see every child in the room.
“Inclusion is not just about creating ramps. It is about creating mindsets. And that begins in the classroom.”
SVP, SAP Labs · Author · Keynote, Global Ed-Fest 2026
The theme
One word.
Four letters.
Everything.
Not disabled. Not differently abled. Simply — able.
Ability is the default
Every child arrives in this world capable. The question is never whether the child can. The question is whether we built the room right.
Inclusion is architecture
It is not a ramp added after the building is finished. It is in the blueprint. In the curriculum. In how the teacher is trained to see.
Schools change communities
The school that includes every child does not just serve that child. It sends a message to the entire neighbourhood about who belongs.
The Jaipur Commitment
The city itself becomes part of the story.
No other education conference in India has ever done this. Global Ed-Fest 2026 is working with Jaipur’s civic authorities, hospitals, heritage sites and major shopping centres to make the Pink City more accessible for people with disabilities.
Not just for three days in August. For the long term.
When you attend this festival, you are not just entering a conference hall. You are becoming part of a commitment that outlives the event itself.
- Accessibility audits and improvements across civic institutions and heritage sites
- Hospital partnerships creating long-term inclusive infrastructure
- A city-wide coalition that continues after August 8th
- A documented legacy that school leaders can take back to their own cities
This is not for everyone.
It is for the ones who refused to stop growing.
Principals. Directors. Founders. Chairpersons. The person at the top of the school who sets the culture and makes the decisions. Five hundred of them. From across India and increasingly from across the world.
These are not passive attendees. They are leaders who came because they were not content to run the same school they ran last year. The programme will not motivate them. It will challenge them.
It will ask them to look at a billion people and answer a single question: what has my school done about this?
from across India and the world
built around one word: ABLE
arriving at its most important moment
ScooNews turns ten
Ten years of changing the room. This is the most important one yet.
Ten years of conversations that became policy. Ten years of school leaders who walked out of Jaipur different from how they walked in. Ten years of refusing to make education feel smaller than it actually is.
For the tenth anniversary, we chose the theme that costs us something. Because the only way to mark a decade that mattered is with a year that matters more.
A billion lives are waiting.
Will you show up?
Global Ed-Fest 2026 · 6–8 August · Jaipur · Rajasthan · India