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The Philosophy
The Philosophy behind the project.
There is a leader in each and every one of us, we may realize it or not but each and every one of us is making a difference in other people lives in our own way. We all are born with enormous talent and potential. Whatever field we might be in, we are born to lead, than why is it that some people excel and some people not, why us it that some people are not able to show up their true worth. Is it because they lack capabilities or urge to succeed or is it because they themselves do not realize their power.
At udgs , we strongly believe that to succeed , to know the true meaning of your own life you need to honest , you need to believe, you need to tell none other than yourself that why are you here , what is the purpose of your life, what is that that make you different from others and to do that you have to express yourself to yourself.
A leader takes control of the situation, stands tall in moments of crises, motivates other, give others a purpose to live and die for. To be a leader of yourself you need to do all these things and many more to yourself, you need to make yourself convinced of your own strengths, you need to stand up and fight in the moments of sadness , you need to give yourself the purpose of your life and for all of this to happen you need to express yourself to be your own leader.
With this philosophy in mind, udgs members came out with its ‘Express and Lead’ project. More than a project it’s a mission to reach to the maximum people around, make them realize their true worth, make them express themselves and motivate self and others to lead a happy, prosperous and meaning full life.
We believe that a person’s attitude , values and outlook towards self and life largely develops during adolescent stage and the project chose to work with this age group directly through its seminars, programs and workshops and also indirectly by training the teachers to change their outlook towards their profession from just an academic teacher to a more inclusive and bigger purpose of nurturing the values, attitude and the overall personality of their students.
We further considered that Today, 1.2 billion adolescents stand at the crossroads between childhood and the adult world. Around 243 million of them live in India. As they stand at these crossroads, so do societies at large – the crossroads between losing out on the potential of a generation or nurturing them to transform society (unicef press release: http://unicef.in/PressReleases/87/Adolescence-An-Age-of-Opportunity) .
As adolescents flourish, so do their communities, and all of us have a collective responsibility in ensuring that adolescence does in fact become an age of opportunity
Under Express and lead, udgs is committed to reach and work with the adolescents in all possible ways to make them realize their true self and inculcate the values and spirit to be a better citizen and contribute in the development of self and the society.
What are we up to
Adolescence is as much a perplexing time of life as it is an amazing one. Running roughly between twelve and twenty four ( yes, into our mid twenties), adolescence is known across cultures as a time of great challenge for both adolescents and the adults who support them ( parents, teachers, counselors etc)
This phase brings lots of changes in one’s life from physical to emotional, social and it is important to understand, support and handle carefully each change a child is going through.
During these years, our minds change in the way we remember, think, observe, focus , pay attention, make decisions and relate to others. In this phase there is a burst of growth and maturation taking place as never before in our lives. Understanding the nature of these changes can help us create a more productive life journey.
This phase is undoubtedly the 'make it or break it' phase for any one, If during this stage the child is handled, nurtured and motivated properly he can do wonders in his/her life and for the society as a whole but on the other side this phase can also lead the child in a direction not just detrimental for his own personal growth but also for the society.
Cases of adolescents getting involved in wrong habits like smoking, drinking, drugs etc. have been on increasing side over the years and more alarming is the increasing trend of 'Juvenile Crimes ' is also a cause of concern.
In India itself ( Some facts with references on adolescents involved in drugs and other malpractices and juvenile crimes'
Lot is being done for increasing the 'Literacy' level in our Country and the efforts of Government, Non Government Organisations , private players is worth appreciating that India as per the latest data has over 74 % literacy level.
But making our youth literate and making them ready for a brighter and meaning full life in future is a separate thing and Our government has also realised this with including 'Soft Skills ' a mandatory part of the Curriculum.
A soft skills curriculum mainly built around following attributes:
- Know Yourself
- SWOT Analysis
- Creativity , Problem Solving and Decision making
- Personality development
- Communication Skills
- Team Building
- Attitude
- Stress Management
- Time Management
- Confidence Building
- Career Planning
- Ethics and Manners
- Presentation Skills
- Interpersonal Skill Development
These attributes contribute largely in the development of the character of the adolescents and if these skills are imparted properly and in an effective manner can prove to be a long term solution towards the rising problem of adolescents being misguided for following wrong practices.
However, success of this initiative depends largely on the way the 'Soft skills training ' is being imparted to the children. An effective implementation , quality programs and effective trainers is required to make this initiative a success and not to let it become yet another subject as a part of curriculam.
Today, 1.2 billion adolescents stand at the crossroads between childhood and the adult world. Around 243 million of them live in India. As they stand at these crossroads, so do societies at large – the crossroads between losing out on the potential of a generation or nurturing them to transform society (unicef press release: http://unicef.in/PressReleases/87/Adolescence-An-Age-of-Opportunity) .
This project is up against the increasing trend of our future generation being misguided towards wrong and mal practices .
Target Beneficiaries
The target beneficiaries of ‘Express and Lead’ are the ‘Adolescents’
The Value Proposition
The project will make the youth , the adolescents meet their true potential and find their ultimate growth path.
How the project work
To understand the issues, thinking and mindset of ‘Adolescents’ , you have to think like them and most appropriately you have to take your life into flashback and relive your ‘Adolescent’ age.
A child during his adolescent age is on a very crucial stage of his life, a proper guidance , motivation, skill transfer can either make or break his life and at this age apart from ‘parents’ the person who holds and contribute the most is his ‘Teacher’.
So under express and lead, udgs chose to work on all the three important contributors in a child’s growth and development :
- ‘The Child himself’ through our direct workshops, training and seminars
- ‘The Teacher’ through our teacher training programs
- ‘The Parents’ through our parents advocacy and intervention programs.
We reach our target beneficiaries through one of the following ways:
- Collaborations with Government and Private ' Schools and Educational Institutions'
- Collaborations with the 'NGO run Schools/institutions
- Collaborations with the 'Rehabilitation Centres' for youth
India has over 15 lakh schools ( as per data compiled by Planning Commission of India,2011) and over 700 Universities and more than 35000 affiliated colleges enrolling more than 20 million students in higher education itself( source: UGC). We are striving hard to increase our reach across different parts of the country and to reach the unreached.
Since its launch, udgs under ‘Express and Lead’ has touched lives of more than 2500 children and teachers through our workshops, seminars and We have a target to reach at least 10,000 adolescents and teachers by 2017 and to increase it to 50,000 by 2020. The progress so far has been positive and with growing experience with each passing workshop/ training/seminar we are confident to surpass our target of touching 50,000 lives way before 2020.
How do we design our workshops
It is said that 'If you are right, it doesn't mean that the other person is wrong'.
Similarly if you have a opinion on a problem and you know your opinion is right it does not mean that the person on the other side of the table will also feel the same way because he has his own thoughts and opinion on the same subject and even though he is on the wrong side he will accept your thoughts until he is convinced himself.
The situation is true with people of all age groups not just with adolescents and in fact the situation is more critical with them considering the state of mind a child is in this stage which means no matter how you tell a adolescent if he is not convinced on a particular subject he will not accept it and he ay not even tell you that.
This is where our current education system and methodology in our opinion fails to address the problems associates with the adolescence. Off late we have been following a direct methodology to guide and teach our children which worked well in the past considering the limited access the child had to evaluate, re evaluate what has been taught to him due to resource constrains but in the present era of information boom a child has access to this vast information right on his palm.
Today, a child will not accept a particular opinion /thought of his parents/teachers just because they feel that way, he will analyse, look around , search the web and only when he is convinced fully then only he will accept else the possibility of him choosing and following the other path is more likely to happen.
Lets say for instance, we say 'Smoking and drinking is injurious to health' and we instruct a child to stay away from these but the child see his favourite movie star smoking and drinking in a movie or opinions of many others who doesn’t feel this way on internet, he may ignore all warnings and may test to check if it affects him or not and from then the situation can grow worse.
So, it is important to first understand how and what the adolescents think and if we can understand their thought process and the direction in which they are thinking, we can effectively communicate our message or thoughts by using proper techniques and methodology.
In other words, instead of following just the 'Direct method' for teaching if we can follow the 'Indirect route' and make the child realise himself/herself about the consequences of such issues , the chances of the long term impact of the teaching on the child is higher.
Under 'Express and Lead' we design our workshops using the 'Indirect Method', with activities like:
- Group Discussions
- Role Plays
- Theatre Impromptu
- Debates
- Ethical reasoning'
- Story building and telling
- Creative problem solving
We work on the thought process of the children and cover issues that matters.
Another important consideration in our workshops is we work on the soft skills of the children, so all workshops are designed keeping following two considerations in mind:
- Cover issues that are important for the self growth and a contribute to a good character development of the child.
- Work on the soft skills of the children
Our Journey so far
Its been 2 years ( and counting ..) for our project 'Express and lead' and these two years were filled with some great learning experience and interactions with our target beneficiaries.
We begun our journey with a private school ' Lancer's Convent' in Delhi in the month of October'2014 wherein we interacted with students from Class VI to Class XII in over three batches and this collaboration laid the foundation stone for our subsequent collaborations and work and we extended our collaborations with several private schools, government schools, NGOs run schools, Child homes , educational institutions since then.
As on December,2016 we have interacted with over 2500 students and teachers through our workshops , seminars, sessions in different parts of the country and our major collaborations where we have conducted our workshops/seminars include:
- Lancers Convent Public School, Delhi
- Don Bosco Ashalayam, Delhi
- Deepalaya's Child home , Haryana
- Jamghat, Delhi
- Ashakiran, Haryana
- YWCA, Delhi
- Vidyasthal, Delhi
- I-Tecs, Madhya pradesh
We have a target to reach at least 10,000 adolescents and teachers by 2017 and to increase it to 40,000 by 2020. The progress so far has been positive and with growing experience with each passing workshop/ training/seminar we are confident to surpass our target of touching 50,000 lives way before 2020.
Some of the memories from our workshops have been given below:
Feedback That Matters
There can be no better reward and no better motivation that the honest feedbacks from your participants who are your target beneficiaries. After every workshop or program we request our participants to give their feedbacks in as many words and in any form they feel like and over the years we have received tremendous response from our participants.
Azmatullah
I liked the sessions too much and would request to continue the sessions for lifetime
Vandana
We really enjoyed today's workshop. We really enjoyed and learned from the videos you shown us.
Rahul Sharma
I would like to thank you and your team for your efforts. Children of institutions like us need these kind of trainings and workshops, they feel refresh and energetic.
Shehzadi
Learny so many new things which I didn’t know earlier. We realised the power of subconscious mind and that we need to fill it with good thoughts. Thanks Bhaiya
Aayesha
I really liked today's session. Will never forget this workshop for life. I used to think negatively from from today onwards my outlook has been changed. Learnt a lot from you bhaiya.
Tarun
We loved today's session and the way Naveen Sir took the class. Would like to have daily sessions from him
Project Memories
Two years may not be a very long period but our journey so far has been a memorable experience for us, new ideas, interactions , meeting new people and what not. These two years have given us some unforgettable moments for life and these moments are still afresh in our hearts and continue to motivate us to work harder to create many more such memories.
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Join Our Team
At udgs we welcome every individual who connect with our project and its objectives and who is willing to contribute in the development of the project. If you think you can contribute in any of the following key areas of the project, please write to us at info@udgs.org.
- Content Development
- Module designing
- Trainer
- Event Coordinator
- Managing Collaborations
- Media Management
- Networking Coordination
- Social Media Management