EXPERIENCES

The Junior Youth Empowerment Program was developed through a global network of organizations as a way of developing language skills, power of expression and the overall empowerment of the new generations of young people. With the means and opportunity to explore a multitude of concepts and themes, JYEP empowers the children to deal with the complexities of life, combat negative social forces, and become active agents of social change. A major element of the JYEP is the selfless acts of service or “service projects” that are aimed at helping the community in whatever way possible. This plays a vital role in assisting the Junior Youth to apply what they’ve learnt into meaningful action to positively impact the lives of others around them.

Following this, I lead the JYEP animators (volunteers) of senior section ,with the guidance of Mrs. Rubina and Mrs. Niruda – my JYEP instructors , to start the HELPING HANDS Program. These were Tutorial sessions where the animators helped their juniors in the preparation of upcoming Examinations. This program turned out to be very helpful to students as alongside animators, who worked really hard,  students too actively took part in the sessions. It was  largely due to this enthusiasm of kids that sometimes the sessions continued for more than two hours. I feel another major reason behind the success of this program was that juniors were more open to their seniors and hence Helping Hand provided them an environment where they were comfortable in clearing their doubts without any hesitation.

HELPING HAND assisted me in increasing my competence in various aspects. Since I was the one leading, I had to handle all sorts of issues – from making the schedule of the sessions, sharing it with students to arranging study materials to ensuring that both the tutors and the students were not facing any difficulty in communication. From these I developed the important skills such as Time-management, Organizational skill, Prioritizations and Decision-making. I also learnt skills like Team building and motivating which were sometimes required when the animators also had some personal works to do and at that same time their presence was also very necessary. The tutorial sessions were held online, hence quite a couple of times animators couldn’t join the link on time. due to technical faults, so I had to interact with the juniors so as to ensure that they remained focused and enthusiastic. Through this I acquired communication skills.

Besides HELPING HAND, I sometimes accompanied my fellow batchmates to moral teaching classes and did some interactive activities, like Career Ladder, with the students of primary sections. One of the most interactive activities was Career Ladder Activity. In Career Ladder activity we asked the kids to make a ladder and fill the blanks between the steps of ladder with the profession they want to join in future. We then asked them to write down what all skills, knowledge and experience they require for that profession. As expected, most of the kids came up with some or the other profession. But very few of them knew what they had to do to join that profession. We then helped them explore their path of what they need to learn, which course they need to pursue etc. Hence through activities like these we tried encouraging the students to think about their future and tried to introduce them to the world of possibilities which they never thought of before.