Empower Vulnerable Young People with Life Skills

“I learnt the importance of listening to and following instructions through these sessions, which I apply in my daily life, be it in school or at home.” - Prajwal

Prajwal is a 14-year-old, 9th Grade student of South End Public School. This school is situated in an area where students are exposed to gang violence, bad language and casual attitudes towards studying and attending school. Majority of the students who attend this school come from underprivileged families, with parents struggling to make ends meet.

 Prajwal comes from a small family of humble means. His father is a cab driver, while his mother is a housewife. His younger brother studies in the 5th grade in the same school. Both Prajwal and his younger brother are part of Dream a Dream’s After School Life Skills Programme through the medium of Sports.

 Prajwal has been a part of Dream a Dream’s sessions for the past 6 years. He remembers being a young boy who had a lot of anger pent up, who never listened to anybody. Maheshwaran, the Dream a Dream facilitator expressed, “When I first started taking sessions for Prajwal’s batch, he was in the 7th Grade. I observed how naughty he was. He would keep disturbing the sessions, make his friends fight and then act like he had nothing to do with it. He would never listen to any of my instructions and kept aloof during the sessions. When I spoke to his teachers, they had the same complaint. As he was good in academics, so he used to get away with this behaviour.” He spent some time working with Prajwal, giving him responsibilities of distributing snacks and leading a few activities in the sessions. He wanted Prajwal to acknowledge his own potential and work towards developing those leadership skills of taking initiative, being calm when there was a conflict and working together as a team to solve issues. Prajwal shared, “When I first started coming for these sessions, I didn’t know anything about football. I just came for fun and the snacks. A couple of years ago, when Maheshwaran Anna started taking the sessions, he shared his personal story which helped me deal with my anger issues. I feel I have learnt the skill of being patient during tough situations, during the football games.”

Through the sessions, he feels he has learnt the skills of working together as a team to solve problems. He remembers an activity conducted by Maheswaran, the Dream a Dream facilitator when they tried very hard to work individually to complete the task but towards the end, realised that if they had worked together, how much more efficient it would have been. This learning stayed with him and he tried to incorporate that not only during the football sessions but in other school activities as well. His principal shared, “We recently conducted pongal celebrations in the school, and Prajwal was given the opportunity to lead. He did such a wonderful job in ensuring that the celebrations went off well. Instead of doing it all on his own, he delegated work to his classmates and through good team work, ensured that everything went off well.” Prajwal’s mother has also seen a change in his behaviour at home. “He used to get angry and lose his temper if he didn’t get his way. Now, he is much calmer and his anger has reduced considerably.”

What caused this shift? Prajwal said, “Initially I just came for the snacks and then slowly, the facilitator started giving us opportunities to play in tournaments. He believed that I could play well and be a leader. This made me believe in myself and my own skills.” When asked what differentiated his facilitator from his teachers, Prajwal smiled and said, “The facilitator is serious when the situation demands it and fun during other times, whereas the teachers are always serious.”

 Maheshwaran shared on why he feels Prajwal has truly changed, “From the boy who never listened to instructions and kept heckling during the sessions, he has come a long way. Today, when I give him a task, he will do it and take it many steps further, with a lot more effort and creativity. He takes initiative in helping with the sessions.”

 Thriving for Prajwal is accepting his potential and working hard to change his behaviour. It is him working on himself and pushing himself to take initiative in helping others, leading others and working together towards succeeding at a task. Thriving is Prajwal role-modeling his facilitator and becoming patient and silent when dealing with conflict and being careful in not letting his anger get the better of him and hurt someone else. It is him seeing the greater good of the team and pushing for that, in every action.

Dream a Dream works through three key programmes, ASLSP and CCP which directly impacts young people and the Teacher Development Programme (TDP) which indirectly impacts young people through teachers. In ASLSP and CCP, we use a creative life skills approach where young people can make better choices and become more meaningfully engaged. TDP engages teachers to indirectly impact young people and is designed to nurture empathy, expand their creativity, develop listening and validation skills and the ability to share with authenticity while also learning facilitation skills.

Currently, we work with 10,000 young people a year through our two innovation labs – After School Life Skills Programme (ASLSP) and Career Connect Programme (CCP), have trained over 7,700 teachers/educators from 206 partners impacting over 1,92,500 children and have impacted over 1 million children through strategic partnerships with state governments in Delhi and Jharkhand. We work on a strong collaborative approach with local charities, corporates, volunteers, governments, expert consultants and a host of national and international strategic partners.

The impact evaluation of the life skills approach implemented across all the three programmes of Dream a Dream for the year 2018-2019 documents the best practices and innovations to provide inputs and insights for national and international level policies and programmes in life skills education. Dream a Dream has a standardized impact assessment scale for Life Skills – Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS) – to measure life skills. The LSAS developed in-house is a first of its kind, published and standardized scale that is being used by NGOs/Schools to assess improvement in life skills - http://globaled.gse.harvard.edu/files/geii/files/dream_life_skills_assessment_scale_final_2.pdf.

Major findings from our impact evaluation include: 1) All three programmes (ASLSP, CCP, TDP) showed improvement in life skills of young people. 2) The improvement in scores was statistically significant for all three programmes. 3) Male and female participants improved in each of the five life skills measured. 4) The Last Mile Support Programme (LMSP) showed that 97.6% of the young people were meaningfully engaged. 5) Life skilling teachers through TDP helped in improving the life skills of students. Through the teachers, life skills of students have improved drastically.

Based on the evidence of the impact evaluation, it is clear that all programmes are on-track to achieve its intended results. The findings of the study indicate that the results of all intervention strategies were effective in developing and nurturing life skills among the participants. Our impact report for FY2018-19 can be shared upon request.

Dream a Dream has been recognized and awarded for innovation, transparency and accountability over the years by Ashoka, Global Development Network, Harvard, Rockefeller Foundation, Resource Alliance and others. These videos talk about our work - https://vimeo.com/124809296 and https://vimeo.com/124817309

AFTER SCHOOL LIFE SKILLS PROGRAMME

 In our After School Life Skills Programme, we use creative arts and football as mediums to engage and develop critical life skills among young people between the ages of 8 to 15 years. This programme is an innovation lab where new approaches to life skills development are introduced, demonstrated, documented, evaluated, and fed back into a larger framework for re-imagining learning for young people in the country. To measure the improvements in life skills amongst the young people, we use the Life Skills Assessment Scale (LSAS*).

 *The LSAS is the first standardized impact measurement tool in the world to measure improvement in life skills among disadvantaged children.