Deciding on the choice of a career is a very confusing and trying time in the life of a 15-year-old adolescent!! With very limited exposure to various career options, the choice of appropriate educational next steps also becomes a tricky question to answer. Compounded to this, if the adolescent belongs to a low-income family, he/she may not have access to appropriate sources of information or role models to guide him/her through this difficult phase. According to statistics, while 86% of Indian students are very concerned about which option to choose for higher education, 92% of them don’t get any career-related guidance from their schools (India Today 2017).
The CareerAware program guides the students in making career choices, through the following process:
• CareerAware uses an easy to navigate tool that guides the adolescents towards understanding themselves, their interests and abilities through customized psychometric tests. • The next step is exposing them to the many career options open to them, the qualifications and aptitude required for pursuing different careers.
• They are then guided on then planning their own careers by marrying the above two, which finally translates into a self-defined career plan.
The results are presented in the form of a template which can be used at any point later in life to decode their aptitudes and suitable career options. The tool is administered by trained facilitators through a series of activities and experiences.
Once the tool is administered, the counsellors come back after 2 weeks to counsel students one on one, with the help of individual career counselling reports. Their queries are solved and advised on next steps.
Recent Impact in a Brief:
• 54,333 students were a part of CareerAware since inception.
• 10,229 students part of CareerAware in the past 3 months.
• We have 10 active government partnerships in Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Udaipur and Pune.
One of our CareerAware participants, Soni, is a 9th standard student from Malwani Municipal school. Soni found the CareerAware Program very interesting and thought-provoking as it not only familiarized her with basic concepts of self-awareness, career awareness and career planning, but also made her look at her career with a more detailed lens. She was totally unaware of what varied careers she could pursue after class 10th and what were the necessary steps towards pursuing them. After CareerAware her results were in line with what she had listed as her career aspirations, i.e., Artist and Gym/Sports Trainer. She now feels more confident to pursue them as she attained the awareness regarding what course or diploma would help her in the process. Soni was grateful for the fun learning process that opened her world to diverse ideas and concepts.
There are many others like Soni who need your continued support for realizing and achieving their dreams. Your support will help us reach out to and impact more youth in the near future. We are immensely proud of what we have achieved so far which would not have been possible without your support. Thank you for the trust you have placed in us.
Deciding on the choice of a career is a very confusing and trying time in the life of a 15-year-old adolescent!! With very limited exposure to various career options, the choice of appropriate educational next steps also becomes a tricky question to answer. Compounded to this, if the adolescent belongs to a low-income family, he/she may not have access to appropriate sources of information or role models to guide him/her through this difficult phase. According to statistics, while 86% of Indian students are very concerned about which option to choose for higher education, 92% of them don’t get any career-related guidance from their schools (India Today 2017).
The CareerAwareprogram guides the students in making career choices, through the following process:
The tool is administered by trained facilitators through a series of activities and experiences. Once the tool is administered, the counselors come back after 2 weeks to counsel students one on one, with the help of individual career counseling reports. Their queries are solved and advised on next steps.
2018 -19 Impact in a Brief:
23,935 students were a part of CareerAware
3 was the number of cities where the program was executed
13348 hours of content delivered
91% of students equipped with the self-awareness to recognize their interests and abilities
71% of students could identify career options in line with their psychometric profiles
60% of students displayed clarity of career plans at the end of the program
93% of students agreed with the career recommendations provided by the program
92% of students rated the program ‘4 and above’ on a scale of 1 to 5
One of our CareerAware participants, Suhasini, is a 9th standard student from Malad Municipal school. Before going through the CareerAware program, she thought of working with an NGO. After completing the program she became aware that her interests and aptitude are well suited for the police service. She is now determined to crack the UPSC and become an IPS officer.
There are many others like Suhasini who need your continued support for realizing and achieving their dreams. Your support will help us reach out to and impact more youth in the near future. We are immensely proud of what we have achieved so far which would not have been possible without your support. Thank you for the trust you have placed in us.
Thanks to donors like you, we are proud to share that in 2018-19, Antarang reached out to 23.400 new young adults across Mumbai & Pune in Maharashtra & the district of Udaipur in Rajasthan. We have cumulatively worked with over 48,000 students in the 6 years.
Out CareerAware program that reached out to 20,900 adolescents across 326 government run schools in Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Thane, Pune & Udaipur. One of the key objectives of the CareerAware program is to retain students in education until age 18 & 92% of the pool of students we worked with last year reported an intent to stay in education until then.
We worked with almost 1300 students in our 18 month CareeReady program working in 8 communities, 9 colleges & 1 children's institution. 86% of Antarng students are on a career path enagged in eduaction, employment or training. We also piloted a Career Campus, the first of its kind as an Employability hub within a community.
As another new year has started full of energy, we look forward to your continued support!
The Annual Statistics of Education Report (ASER) is an annual survey that aims to provide reliable annual estimates of children’s schooling status and basic learning levels for each state and rural district in India. It is the largest citizen-led survey in India, and is also the only annual source of information on children’s learning outcomes available in India today. The latest issue of the ASER report, published in 2018, highlights the glaring fact that while only 2.8% of the youth in the 6-14age group are not currently enrolled in school or college, this number gets significantly augmented as we proceed through the age groups. This same statistic, for youth in the country in the 11-14 age group stands at 3.7%, showing a marked increase. Further, the report goes on to state that approximately 13.1% of youth in the 15-16 age group, in the country, are not enrolled in any form of education, which is a very worrying indicator. This implies that for a country like India, one that possesses a distinct advantage in terms of its young demographic dividend (approximately 600 million youth, making it the world’s youngest country), these percentages translate into humungous numbers of youth who are not currently engaged in the formal education system.
Research over the years has indicated that career and technical education (CTE) programs have a strong positive influence on secondary students’ behavior, attendance, academic achievement, and college persistence. Critical success factors common to career academies and schools making use of career counselling include a strong environment of socio-emotional support and community, along with a culture of high expectations and student engagement. Miller and Imel (1987) attest that students with low motivation to attend school have shown improvement in school attendance and retention after participating in career education and that vocational students who have participated in career education are more likely to complete the vocational program they have selected. Research also demonstrates that participation in career guidance and exploratory programs help to improve students’ academic performance, school behavior, and attendance (Brand, 2008; Farr et al., 2009; Hoachlander, 2008; Kosine& Lewis, 2008; Mekinda, 2012; Stringfield, Shumer, Stipanovic, & Murphy, 2013) and lower dropout rates (Brand, 2008; Feller, 2003; Hoachlander, 2008; Howard & Wu, 2009; The James Irvine Foundation, 2009). Additionally, students who have undergone career guidance programs and then step into careers post high school are more likely to realize higher wages than students who enter the workforce after graduation from solely academically focused programs (Hoachlander, 2008).
However, according to statistics, while 86% of Indian students are very concerned about which option to choose for higher education, 92% of them don’t get any career-related guidance from their schools. The 2018 Annual International Career and College Counseling (IC3) Conference that concluded on August 30th 2018, in New Delhi, acknowledged this very same fact: that India's 350 million students -the biggest student population in the world today -need at least 1.4 million career counsellors to maintain a globally acceptable student-to-school-counselor ratio (India Today, August 2018).
Antarang Foundation’s experience in the sector, over the last 6 years, indicates that a lack of awareness of career options results in adolescents and young adults making career and educational choices that are not in line with their aptitude and interests, or even in line with the basic industry requirements. This in turn leads to a high dropout rate from pathways of higher education, that enable career development. Antarang Foundation’s CareerAware model is designed to addresses this issue.
Aligning with the government’s agenda to meet the needs of career guidance and counseling, Antarang Foundation launched the CareerAware (CA) program in 2013-14 to facilitate self-awareness and career awareness, with the hope of ensuring that students make more informed career choices and form a self-defined coherent career plan. The program enables students to make informed choices, making them career focused, and in turn, ensures that they cultivate the intent to stay in education, at least until the age of 18 years.
During the year 2018-19, Antarang reached out to a total of over 12,000 students across over 204 MCGM schools, through its CareerAware program. During the course of the program, the students were introduced to concepts of self-awareness, were made aware of over 59 different career streams, were facilitated in determining their career options as well as the suitable next steps required to achieve them. A one-on-one counseling session, at the end of the 5-day program, was also conducted with these students.
Less than 1 in 2 of India’s children actually complete high school. The process of making the choice of a career and educational stream is at once an exciting as well as a confusing time in the life of a school going student!! Antarang’s flagship program, CareerAware, aims to aid this transition of a student from school to higher educational or vocational education choices, in line with their career aspirations, by offering career guidance solutions to students studying in standards 8-10.
The 3 year long program begins by engaging 8th graders, aiding them in exploring and deep diving into 7 career streams. This year long career-immersion program, known as ‘World of Exposure’, runs for 108 hours in the 8th grade. The program is envisioned as a year-long career exploration and guidance program, and aims at seeding the thought of careers in the young minds, providing students with the tools that enables them to think about various careers through a combination of industry exposure and understanding of career concepts. In 2017-18 alone, Antarang was able to successfully facilitate the WoE program with 339 students across Mumbai.
The primary objective of CareerAware (CA) intervention in 9th standard is to facilitate an adolescent’s awareness of the self, followed by an awareness of the many career options open to them in the non-exploitative sector. The program thereby guides the students in making a career choice in the light of their better understanding of careers and themselves which finally translates into a self-defined career plan. The “hook” of career aspiration in the non-exploitative sector in turn is expected ensure that these students remain in education till at least the age of 18.
In 2017-18, CareerAware ran successfully in 295 government run secondary schools and 32 hostels for tribal children spread across Mumbai, 11 blocks in Udaipur district in Rajasthan and 8 English medium secondary schools in Pune run through the iTeach school network. It is a matter of pride to note that the CA program managed to reach out to 15,436 students in 2017-18 alone, and 89% of the students reached were sure that they would stay in education at least until the age of 18.
Your donations towards our cause would go a long way in helping us enable a world wherein every young person is passionately, productively and positively engaged not only in a career, but one of their choice and liking.
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