How Arthan Foundation’s ‘Daftar Duniya’ is empowering educators and changing lives
Multitudes of youngsters walk into unforgivingly challenging professional workspaces, equipped with only hollow skill sets and incompetent knowledge to fortify their standing.
Multitudes of youngsters only dream.
The widened gap between formal education and the world of work has plagued youngsters stepping into professional workspaces. The condition is only worse for children and young adults from underserved communities who don’t have equal access to opportunities, education and career counselling. These youngsters do not receive the skills to equip them to meet the growing 21st century workspace needs, head on and are therefore left unemployed.
‘Daftar Duniya’, a programme of Delhi based non-profit organisation ‘Arthan Foundation’, is a ray of hope for government school students. Their aim, to empower educators working with children, have given well over 5000 government school children a realistic perspective into their dream job and how they should go about developing themselves, for it to be more than a dream. Arthan’s method of a systematic ‘Training of Trainers’ has provided these educators with an in-depth training on the curriculum that they would further impart to the students in the government schools. The detailed and systematic curriculum has in itself essential tools focusing on self-discovery, planning for a world of work, mapping out barriers and overcoming them and the much needed 21st century skills which include problem solving, communication, collaboration and critical thinking.
The team’s process of training these trainers begins with them collaborating with organisations like Teach For India (TFI) and Breakthrough India Trust. The fellows or staff from these organisations sign up as educators and the Arthan team engages them in training sessions. These sessions allow the facilitators to re-imagine themselves as kids and go over imagining and planning their careers all over again- a process that helps them to better understand the activities that they would be conducting with the students, from the perspective of the students. These trainers, once completely trained in the curriculum, take it to their classrooms. The programme then runs for 16-19 weeks with the facilitators dedicating an hour a week towards the programme.
The team’s continued and diligent efforts have made it possible for them to access more students and change a lot more lives in the last academic year. The team is more than determined to reach more children and enable them to recognize and fulfill their potential.