The power of youth is the commonwealth for the entire world. The faces of young people are the faces of our past, our present and our future. No segment in the society can match with the power, idealism, enthusiasm and courage of the young people.
-Kailash Satyarthi
The transition from youth to adulthood marks a key period characterized by greater economic independence, political involvement, and participation in community life. However, the socioeconomic and political environment in which young people live can have a serious impact on their ability to engage.
A staggering number of young people are not in education, employment or training, delaying their full socioeconomic integration. The lack of effective economic and employment policies and insufficient job creation has left many young people with no option but to accept part-time, temporary or informal work. At the same time, outdated education systems are ill equipped to meet the changing and diverse needs of today’s labour market. Inadequate training and skill obsolescence translate into limited job prospects for youth—even when the economy improves.
India’s social transformation largely depends on the engagement of youth in an innovative way by providing them with the right platform to harness their capabilities into positive action.
India, despite having one of the highest adolescent and youth populations in the world still haven’t utilised this valuable resource to its fullest. Youth is the second most vulnerable population in lesser privileged communities, after children. Even though every youngster aspires to achieve education, secure jobs and be independent, under dire circumstances some might be forced to choose to earn means of living when presented with a tough choice between education and livelihood. But does that mean they don’t deserve a second chance to complete education? Don’t they deserve to have fine mentors and motivated individuals around them to support them, to uplift them with skills and knowledge, to let them see their true potential which they never had the privilege to look upon?
VIDYA’s Youth Program envisages making the youngsters’ dreams, which were put aside, a reality. With the Youth Program in the communities, they have a ray of hope to finish their studies and to accomplish their goals in life. Keeping these things in mind, Youth Forum was seeded.
Youth Forum is the latest initiative taken by VIDYA to work more closely with the community youth in a non-formal environment. It caters to age group of 15-35 years. It started in January 2016. The total enrolment averages 70-100. Alumni of Beyond School and Youth from Digital Empowerment Program and Open School Program and other youth from the community are part of this forum.
Youth Forum, which began in January 2016 has come a long way since then. It started out by just 20 Youth initially. After the students’ completion of 10th grade, they are slowly getting closer to ending with our Beyond School program and have to begin preparing to pursue higher education and employment opportunities. Therefore, the Youth Forum becomes guiding agent for these youth to understand how to navigate their educational and employment journey. Youth Forum prepares these students with life &Soft skill sessions, workshops that focus on essential skills and knowledge to be prepared for the competitive workforce and college journey.
Along with preparing the youth is emphasizing giving back to the community and being a contributing member. Every student has successfully secured a job or pursued their studies further. Youth also have been able to acquire necessary life skills & soft skills along with the requisite employability skills through the Youth forum.
The Youth Forum is targeted at students (alumni or youth from the communities that VIDYA works with) from the age group 15 – 35 years aiming to mould them into leaders and socially responsible productive citizens. The forum meets twice or thrice a week. The average enrolment is 60 per year. Our alumni of Beyond School and Youth from our Digital Empowerment Program and Open School Program are part of this forum. The focus is on soft skills, life skills, career guidance, vocational training, and project-based learning.
Youth development programs seek to improve the lives of children and adolescents by meeting their basic physical, developmental, and social needs and by helping them to build the competencies needed to become successful adults. The focus is on Academic assistance through Volunteers, soft skills, life skills, career guidance, vocational training, and project-based learning. The VIDYA Team completes the flow by identifying suitable growth opportunities either in the field of further education, vocational training, placement assistance, career-ready courses through collaboration with partner agencies such as Anatarang, Reliance Foundation etc.
Youth are trained and made employable through various courses such as Job ready course through Partner organization, improvement in soft skill through various sessions, IT skills are enhanced through DEP Program at VIDYA. Later, Placement assistance is provided to youth as per the age, eligibility and criteria.
Objectives:
Yuvanaad Competition
VIDYA Youth Program students have been participating in the Youth festival organised by Sneha Foundation in various categories such as Debate, Street play, Poster making, Photography etc. VIDYA Youth Program has won the overall competition in Jan 2020 and Jan 2021. Youth Forum has been more than 6 prizes in all the categories which increases their overall tally and making them the overall winners. Youth Forum are the defending champions currently.
Winning students received certificates and monetary prize which were couriered along with the Rolling (Rotating trophy)
Covid Relief Initiative by Youth Forum Students
The Covid-19 pandemic has not only caused havoc in the public health system but also led the country into a deep socio-economic crisis. The pandemic in cities has unquestionably added to the chronic distress among the urban poor living in slums and made them more vulnerable.
The second wave of Covid-19 abruptly hit Mumbai while it was recovering from the wounds of the first wave. On April 4, the city reported 11,163 positive cases, its highest single-day spike leaving the state government no choice but to deliberate on stringent lockdown measures. As affluent sections of the society locked themselves in, poor slum dwellers could not afford to do so.
VIDYA works in Mumbai slums, in and around the Powai region which comes under the ‘S’ ward. VIDYA Mumbai youth task force identified the challenges prevailing like the lack of Beds, oxygen, ambulance etc. |
Therefore, we at VIDYA have created a task force and helpline number which will help the communities in ‘S’ ward for all those things such as
• Availability of beds
• Ambulance
• Oxygen concentrators as per the availability.
– Vaccine awareness and registration.
The task force also served in Food distribution and device distribution whenever needed.
IIT Abhudya initiated social awareness program in collaboration with BMC. This included cleaning the Powai lake and awareness session by BMC followed by Q&A. Youth forum students participated in this initiative. It started from 7:15 till 9:00. After that students gathered at Powai Udyan for awareness session by BMC.
BMC staff member spoke about what they are doing to solve the problem such as using Ingress. This is used for cleaning the Powai lake water and making it less toxic and reducing the amount of Hyacinth.
Head Office Block-S, Plot no. 3126,
DLF Phase III,
Gurgaon - 122001, India
Head Office (Delhi NCR): 8130474724
Mumbai: 022-25787317
Bangalore: 09986422009
Delhi: office@vidya-india.org
Mumbai: mumbai@vidya-india.org
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