By Vishal Talreja | Co-Founder
This is an open space. Nobody will judge you here.”- Anjum
Anjum is a talented 20-year-old facilitator to the young men and women at the Career Connect Centre in Bommanahalli, Bangalore. Brought up in a highly conservative family, sheltered with strong orthodox values, Anjum had a very narrow perception of the world around her. Having been repeatedly told that society would never be kind to any kind of friendship with boys, and that it would lead to her name being tarnished, she interacted less with them. Her family comprises of four members, a father who owns and runs a provision store near their house, her mother is a homemaker and her younger sister is a school dropout. Anjum is the first girl in her family to make it till the 11th grade and her father being very liberal, envisioned a very different life for her, where she was educated and could secure a stable future for herself. While Anjum felt she had the license to dream of pursuing higher studies, getting a successful job and moving abroad, life had an entirely different road to thriving, in store for her.
Earlier this year, one of her neighbours, on being referred to by a young person who is a regular to the Career Connect Centre in Bommanahalli, told her about the free computer sessions. Along with her parents, she came to the Centre and enrolled herself in the Basic Computers course, being highly sceptical of what would happen. The first thing to shock her during the sessions were how boys and girls would sit side by side and converse together happily. The second thing was how everybody had something to say and nobody made them feel bad for saying it or feeling it. 19-years of conditioning made her feel very uncomfortable and she decided to be brave and share with Mahendra, her facilitator, as she felt that this was a safe space where she could be open and express her feelings. He explained, “If you want to be friends with a boy, then it will remain a friendship and not turn into anything else.” This was so different from what she had heard before and this took her some time to accept and absorb. The positive and friendly environment slowly made Anjum drop her guard and make friends with both boys and girls. She was slowly changing, and she did not even know it. Once shy and silent Anjum stood up and openly spoke in the sessions and interacted with her peers.
The whole experience made to feel safe in this space, she did not want to leave and made up her mind to become a facilitator, so that she could help other troubled youth like herself. It took her some time to find a skill and it happened when she enrolled herself for a puppetry session, conducted by facilitators Pavithra and Ravi, and made some beautiful costume designs. Interactions during the session, Pavithra felt that there was something in Anjum that needed to be tapped. Pavithra says, “I could sense that she possessed leadership qualities which could surface if she had a patient adult to speak to her and enable her to explore her potential. Coming from a conservative family, she never raised her voice and was very shy.”This immediately caught Pavithra’s eye and enabled Anjum to discover her hidden talent of fashion designing and encouraged her to facilitate a session for the young people at the Centre.
Anjum soon realized that preparing to take sessions was not easy as first she had to observe sessions and then create a curriculum for the same, which was entirely new to her. Self-doubt began to creep in because she had never facilitated a session before and then she remembered what the facilitators had said, “This is an open space. Nobody will judge you here.” Armed with this knowledge and her own experiences of participating in two different life skills sessions, she started working on the curriculum.
Her course was a great hit and she worked on all the feedback she received from the young people and after the first couple of sessions, young people who weren’t initially interested became inspired by Anjum’s delivery and began approaching the senior facilitators at the Centre, asking to start advanced sessions on the same.
Pavithra says, “Recently, there was a property dispute between her parents and their relatives. Anjum was the pillar of support for them during this time, which surprised us all, including her parents. She has role-modelled facilitators at the Career Connect Centre.”
Anjum owes her success to the love and care that the place provided which was like what her parents had for them. “Even a boy who wants to participate in a beautician’s class, they are given full support. Nobody is ordered to do anything. The facilitators here only encourage and suggest options. Parents, on the other hand, do not support any skills apart from studying. They are creating a new change and a new mentality in society!”
Thriving is her being inspired by the facilitators and providing her parents strength during difficult times. It is her learning when to follow and when to lead with confidence and humility. Thriving is overcoming self-doubt and pushing herself into a zone where she feels uncomfortable. Anjum’s road to thriving is no more earning a lot of money and procuring materialistic things. Thriving for her is helping other young people explore and discover their skills, like Mahendra and Pavithra helped discover her love for fashion designing.
Why Dream a Dream and Life skills?
COVID 19 has disrupted the status quo creating space to drive change and equip young people with Life skills to adapt to situations like the one created due to the pandemic. At Dream a Dream, we believe that the 21st century provides an excellent opportunity to young people from vulnerable backgrounds to ‘go beyond’ and step into a future without poverty in spite of not having access to good quality academic education. Young people who are able to adapt to this new, fast changing world through skills and abilities to think creatively, manage conflict, respond with empathy, work in teams, take initiative and be adaptable will be successful in this new world.
The Career Connect programme equips 14-23-year-olds with information, skills and access to opportunities to make a healthy transition to adulthood. We conduct career awareness workshops, run short-term modules in English, communication skills, money management, and career guidance and provide access to internships, scholarships, vocational training and jobs.
The programme is delivered from two learning Centres, based in Bangalore in India. The two most important insights that we have learnt over the years are - the first learning is that turning 18 is no guarantee that you are prepared for a career; the second is that just because you are younger than 18 and can’t get a formal job, doesn’t mean you are not expected to be the bread-winner for your family. Career Connect is focused on developing the life-skills that young people need to navigate this complex phase of adolescence and ensure they are prepared for life.
Our modules include career awareness workshops, communication skills workshops, English communication workshops, money management and career guidance. At the next stage, young people can choose various skilling programmes as per their interest and need such as Beautician, Hospitality, Painting, etc. We close the loop by providing youth access to internships, scholarships, vocational training and placement. Each of these modules are strategically categorized into
Sharing some of highlights -
To ensure that no young person is left behind in their learning due to lack of access to technological devices; we have arranged young people to have access to tabs. Till date 20 young girls have been provided with tabs to attend our spoken English sessions.
We have partnered with Coursera an American massive open online course provider to give access to their paid certificate courses to enable our young people to explore self – learning opportunities. We have 20 young people exploring varied courses on the platform.
We are able to engage 181 young people in Life Skill Development program with average overall attendance being 88% and the overall average retention being 96%.
We reached out to 11,905 young people wherein young people were able to express the immediate support they needed in terms of placement, scholarship and ration support.
We presented 6 unique opportunities under the Skill Development programmes to 129 young people. The young people had an opportunity to explore Digital Marketing, Photoshop, Professional Make-up, Web Development, Coding and Tally.
We had lots of young people reach out to us for placement support given the lack of job opportunities in the market our alumni formed a supportive community and helped 16 young people gain access to placements.
Testimonials from our programme:
“I dream of being a journalist and to be a journalist you need to be confident and have good communication skills; in the Life Skill Development Programme I was able to develop my self-confidence and I am able to reflect and articulate better on the topics that I need to write for college”.
- Eshwari 20 years Career Connect Graduate from our Life Skill Development Programme
“The Career Connect Skill Development Programme gave me a chance to explore different dance forms; My parents don’t support my passion of becoming a choreographer they would not spend to support my learning. Dream a Dream not only created a space for me to explore dance It also provided me scholarship support to become a trained professional dancer”
- Aishwarya 19 year old Career Connect Graduate from our Skill development programme
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