Education and Skills Development in rural India
Education and life skills development in rural India program is aligned with Sustainable development Goal – SDG 4 that calls to “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”.
There are varied education and skills training needs of rural young people, especially girls and women. It depends on related factors such as the culture, family systems, environment, education, technology, and so forth.
Traditionally youth in rural areas have been mostly exposed to agriculture, animal husbandry and other allied rural occupational skills with low wages, limited mobility and long work hours. They were happy with it till the new globalized economy, television, telephones and modernization brought a change in their aspirations.
Most of the children and youth in rural areas now aspire or harbor comparative lifestyle that is marketed for urban life. The youth perception is that living in rural areas does not give them the potential to find a good job. Thus, youth start visiting or migrating to urban areas to look for better education and jobs. However, so many girls/women still find hard to venture out and in urban space for some of the hardships they have to face in a gender biased society.
Though there is limited opportunities to education and skills development and job opportunities in rural areas that can match everyone’s aspirations, we believe that we can still develop some systems and designs to create some good opportunities for a few who shy away from going far to cities but still harbor aspirations and desires to do more. We intend to facilitate education, skills training and opportunities that can be engaging, productive and self-esteem enhancing for such children and youth in rural areas.
The initiatives not only support the formal school education platforms but goes beyond to create alternative and informal learning platforms that may meet the needs of the ones who keep away from the formal learning centres for one or the other reasons.
Our projects
We have designed and are running the some projects with an aim to develop model resources, activities and facilities that are successful, scale-able and replicate-able for rural India.
- Education and Career Resource Centre (ECRC) – Education and life skills, and career support services for rural young women
- After /At School Program for activity based learning
- Girls Club for life skills education