The challenges of skilling out of school, deprived and disadvantaged youth are many, because of which few NGOs have ventured into this area, and those that have, have generally confined themselves to a few simple subjects like – tailoring and basic computer literacy, because both subjects attract students across the spectrum quite easily. A few large and well organised and well-known NGOs who have ventured in this field have considerable difficulty in scaling up and generally like to confine themselves to a target audience which is relatively better educated i.e. SSC pass or fail so that their chances of employment are brighter than for the less educated youth.
Yuva Parivartan (YP) is among the very few NGOs that have an ‘inclusive Model’ which not only admits but reaches out at the rural level to those who can read and write, regardless of their educational qualifications. The challenges of training youth in this category, whether they are from the rural, semi-urban or urban (slums) are:
a. They have a very short attention span, hence, programs have to be of a short duration – 8 – 10 days max. or few hours a day spread over 60 – 90 days to retain the students;
b. Gender discrimination is rampant in India, hence, boys generally pampered do not have high motivation to attend classes since their expectations of getting 1 or 2 frugal meals in a day are fulfilled by the earning member of the family.
c. Peer pressure encourages them prefer sitting at an ‘Adda’ rather than a classroom. Peer pressure is generally negative and often leads them astray;
d. Role Models & aspirations for the poor are those with a flashy life style and display of wealth, hence they prefer being political hangers-on or resort to some light work or illegal activity to make quick money rather than do manual labour which is their only alternative in the absence of having acquired a skill. Girls on the other hand, welcome an opportunity to escape the daily drudgery of their mothers and are motivated to learn skills as a passport to a better life and an opportunity to socalise with their peers which is difficult in a rural or urban slum setting.
e. Career Planning is non-existent. Large majority of the youth (over 90%) come from the labour class and labour attitude towards life and their world view revolve around living for the day. If they find manual work which is generally during the agricultural season in villages or construction activity in the urban areas, they eat a square meal, and spend the balance immediately, on clothes and entertainment. There is no saving and illness generally make them indebted to the local money-lenders or the slum-lords, leading to the bread-earner wanting to drown his misery in drink. This leads to domestic violence and subsistence living or starvation, a perpetual cycle of misery which is repeated in the next generation. The only escape from this depressing life is to inculcate career planning and emphasize on learning a skill so that they need not do manual labour alone and enables them to avail of the recently thrown up skilled based employment opportunities.
YP efforts have been to reach out to these youth through staff and social workers who introduce the subjects of skills and direct them to various skilled based courses which YP conducts.
YP primarily reaches out to deprived youth through 3 Delivery Formats;
(1) Training Centres owned and conducted by us;
(2) Partnership Centres spread throughout the Country;
(3) Mobile Rural Camps.
In addition we offer Life Skills and Job Preparedness Modules at the end of the course through a unique program specially developed by us called ‘Soch Ka Parivartan’ we try to change their attitude towards Livelihoods through small 10 minute stories narrated each day which have a moral.
In 2011-12 we trained 100,000 students and plan to more than double the number in the current year.
The Second Chance 