Inviting Applications from Youth Leaders

Community - the Youth Collective (CYC) and Pravah invite you to nominate or refer participants to the Changelooms - Learning and Leadership Journey
Change Looms-Learning and Leadership Journey is a leadership programme that encourages, recognises and supports young change leaders who have started social change initiatives with a focus on youth development. This year we will also select at least 8 youth led initiatives with a specific focus on preventing Gender Based Violence (GBV) among young people.  The programme offers opportunities for intensive personal and organizational development.
We are looking for leaders between 18-35 years, who have started a social change project and wish to:
·      Strengthen their social change initiative and learn from experienced mentors
·      Ignite change within to set off an inside-out leadership process.
·      Deeply engage and work with diverse youth leaders.
·      Contribute to youth development in their communities
.      Bridge the gap across social divides, including gender, caste, class and religion
The programme is being offered by Pravah and Commutiny- The Youth Collective (CYC)  jointly. Pravah is a registered non-profit organisation that has been working to build leadership for social change amongst young people for the past 16 years.  CYC is a collective of like-minded professionals from diverse organizations that has come together to develop a shared understanding on youth development and active citizenship and create a common advocacy agenda through the use of alternate and mainstream media.
We encourage young people to apply latest by May 15th, 2013
For any further information, contact Kanika at 9810926641  or Ramneek Banga at 011-26447609; or mail at: changelooms.llj@gmail.com.
Posted by: Kamini Prakash of Pravah

Great opportunity to train and lead young people

Conduct and supervise training and development programs for teachers. Work for developing skills, enhancing productivity and quality of work, and building the passion in the school staff to lead  young people at school.

 Summary and Main Purpose:
The post will be responsible for the key areas of: Developing Partnerships, Extending the Schooling Programme of the Bhadrajun Artisans Trust (BAT), and Training in Bali Rajasthan. This post will also actively participate in aspects of the Strengthening the Structure and leadership development. Work closely with the Delhi based Chairman of  BAT  to ensure coordination of activity, policy and strategy.


Travel To Learn » French Immersion Programme

Travel To Learn » French Immersion Programme

French as a foreign Language is the second most taught language and the only other language that can be useful in the Global Context after English and given this fact one cannot overstate the advantages of learning the French language in a full immersion setting while being surrounded by the beautiful landscape of France day after day.
When you sign up to study abroad in France, you can enjoy everything France has to offer & with a French Immersion Programme course, you can learn the language practically and easily.
“Our Professor was encouraging,enthusiastic, helpful and understanding would love to take this class again”  Rahul Kelkar, (French Immersion Programme)
Write to Anupam Vaid please for more enquiry@traveltolearn.in

The Akanksha Foundation

The Akanksha Foundation is a non-profit organization with a mission to provide children from low-income communities with a high-quality education, enabling them to maximize their potential and transform their lives. Akanksha works in the field of education, initiating school reform through The School Project, and providing a supplemental education through the Akanksha centers.

Currently, Akanksha reaches out to over 4000 children through two models: the after-school or center model and the school model. Akanksha has 40 centers and 13 schools in Mumbai and Pune. Through the centers, a commitment is made to support each child by providing a strong educational foundation, good time, self-esteem and values, and to help them plan how they can earn a steady livelihood as a step towards improving their standard of living. The School Project is a venture to open high-quality schools serving children from low-income communities in Mumbai and Pune.  These schools are in partnership with local municipalities, with the vision of creating small clusters of model schools in these cities that can be used to impact the mainstream education system.

JSPL leads the way in Education and Skills Development - CSR Times

Col Prakash Tewari (Retd) Vice President CSR at JSPL speaks to CSR Times
Over the years, the Jindal Group with its diverse business interests has spread its footprints nationally and internationally, creating value across geographies, cultures and nationalities. Shri O.P. Jindal, the founding chairman of the group sowed the seeds of value leadership by aligning business priorities with social commitments. Thus the Jindal Group has always contributed and promoted healthcare, education, rural infrastructure, sports, culture and other pursuits for the marginalized sections of the population.

ITC, IL&FS Education, others in shortlist for opening model schools - Livemint

ITC, IL&FS Education, others in shortlist for opening model schools - Livemint

Updated: Tue, Apr 23 2013. 08 18 AM IST
New Delhi: The government has short-listed 65 private organizations, including ITC Ltd and IL&FS Education and Technology Services Ltd, to open so-called model schools.
The move, coming after four years of deliberations, is a crucial first step towards partnering with private organizations to open schools, the human resource development (HRD) ministry said.
“This is a key decision and tells that we have completed due diligence in selecting private partners. It’s the beginning of a long pending work which is good for the school sector,” said an HRD ministry official, requesting anonymity.
Click on the heading to read more in Livemint.

India's School Status

Source The Hindustan Times

New Companies Bill mandates CSR spending

INDIA CSR BILL CREATES RIPPLES IN THE SOCIAL SECTOR

MARCH 12, 2013 BY ACUMEN IN OUR WORLD
Recently  the World Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Summit in Mumbai which brought together nearly thirty heads of CSR departments and as many NGOs. The primary areas of discussion were the implications of the new 2% CSR policy included in the new Companies Bill in India.

The Indian parliament is currently in the process of passing this bill, which will make it compulsory for companies of a certain size to spend 2% of their profits towards CSR activities. Specifically the bill states:
  1. All companies with revenue greater than Rs. 1000 Cr ($200M) or profits of 5 Cr ($1M) must spend 2% of the average of the last 3 years profits, towards CSR activity
  2. The Board must designate a 3-member CSR committee (including one Independent Director) to ratify decisions on spending
  3. Employee expenses will not be classifiable as CSR spending
  4. Poverty alleviation, healthcare, education and social business ventures have all been included as potential areas of investment
  5. If the spend is not made in that year, the CSR committee would have to submit an explanation for why that has occurred to not be penalized
If the bill passes, India will be the first country in the world to mandate this kind of expenditure across the board. (Some countries, like Malaysia, have mandated spending towards CSR for certain industries such as mining.)

 "While the final bill and its provision are yet to be passed, the outlook of the social sector, which needs more early-stage funding to succeed, is positive. Thanks to this groundbreaking new bill, organizations with social missions could soon see a lot more much-needed capital heading their way."
Payal Shah is a Business Development Manager in the India office of ACUMEN
With the Lok Sabha giving its approval for the Companies Bill, 2011, Minister of State for Corporate Affairs Sachin Pilot said the aim of the legislation was to make India a safe and attractive destination for investment and to do away with ‘inspector raj’ on companies.

“The aim is to protect the interests of employees and small investors while encouraging firms to undertake social welfare voluntarily instead of imposing that through ‘inspector raj’ and make India an attractive and safe investment destination,” Mr. Pilot, who put up a spirited show during the passage of the Bill, said. The passage of the Bill is another important part of the reforms process being undertaken by the UPA II government.

 Read more in The Hindu

 In the coming week the Bill will be tabled in the Rajya Sabha, after being cleared by the Lok Sabha.

Every Child Needs a Teacher - YouTube

Every Child Needs a Teacher - YouTube
61 million children are not in primary school The biggest thing we can do to give them their right to education is make sure they have access to a trained teacher. To do this, we need 1.7 million more teachers -- 1 million more in Africa alone. 

Every Child Needs a Teacher is a campaign led by the Global Campaign for Education to demand that states act now to ensure every child has well-trained and well-supported teacher.

'Governments are legally bound to provide education of equitable quality'


Vinod Raina,  April 20, 2013   So much has been made of the 25% quota for underprivileged children in private schools, mainly because it is an issue that affects the middle and upper-middle classes.
But the biggest challenge in implementing the Right to Education Act is not the 25% quota. Because private schools make up for only 20% of India's schoolchildren in the RTE age group; 80% are still enrolled in public schools. The true challenge is in providing quality education to children in these schools.
Ever since 2000, when the Sarva Shikhsa Abhiyan (SSA) scheme for universal education was launched, the focus has been on offering some form of schooling to children. Often, this took the form of 'guaranteeing' a single untrained contract teacher.
With the focus on increasing enrolments, the bodies responsible for ensuring quality in textbooks, teacher capability and classroom transactions atrophied, since they were kept out of the SSA.
Then, for implementing the RTE Act, the government decided to use SSA as the vehicle because it already existed. The mindset of the departments is to see it as an extension of the erstwhile scheme - when actually it is a new fundamental right that requires a different attitude and governance mechanisms.
We have gone from the original Constitutional provision that asked the government to 'endeavour' to provide education to every child, to a law that makes it an obligation on the state. The governments are legally bound to provide education of equitable quality, which includes one teacher for every 30 students and a neighbourhood school for every last child.
The real challenge is to fulfil these Constitutional obligations for that 'last' child - whether homeless, migrant, nomad, tribal, disabled or trapped in a conflict zone. This requires different approaches and solutions and that makes it challenging, but the challenges are not insurmountable.
One significant advantage we have is that the Centre has not extended the 2013 targets of the Act. That means that the courts can now get involved.
It also means that the state governments, which spent the first two years of the three-year deadline arguing back and forth about implementation, are now beginning to realise that they can face legal challenges.
It has been the same in other countries where such legal provisions were made, like the US and Japan. There too, it took the involvement of the judiciary to push implementation.
It will take time, but it needn't take very long. In most states, quality education for all children aged 6 to 14 could be achieved in two or three years - maybe five for states like Bihar. What might take longer is changing mindsets, the mindsets that dictate that education is best achieved through fear of failure or of corporal punishment.
But minds have been changed before. We have had reasonable success in outlawing child marriage; we must change mindsets in favour of universal education of equitable quality, which is without fear, trauma and anxiety to the child.
(Vinod Raina, one of the architects of the Right to Education Act, is a member of Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti)

Learning curve

Learning curve - Hindustan Times
The Right to Education (RTE) Act that India enforced on April 1, 2010, requires all private schools to reserve 25% seats for students from economically weak and other disadvantaged sections. These students - children like Kumari's sons - study for free, and schools are compensated by the government. But Kumari was worried.

 India's School Status

Next Education April 2013



The most important object of our educational institutions is to help each student to realize his personality, as an individual representing his people, in such broad spirit, that he may know how it is the most important fact of his life for him to have been born to the great world of man. 
- Rabindranath Tagore
Greetings, 

If you want a better life, there is only one way of getting it - Education.
Not just educating yourself but also educating the world.
Not just educating the mind, but also the physical, the spiritual.
Not just educating the obvious, but also that which lies below the surface.
Expanding ones inner horizon is the only remedy for understanding the hows and whys of life on earth, its purpose, its future.
Much has been written by seers across the ages; seers not only of the ascetic kind but anyone who dared to seek beyond and in between and under. Join them. Look beyond. Dare to think. And educate. Our new issue is doing just that.

Until the next time...
Shonar
Editor, Next Future

What does the future look like?



Your iPhone will help you guide your Robot!

The Fabindia Schools Community on Facebook

 The Fabindia Schools Community:

Facebook group for all the ex-students, staff and friends of The Fabindia Schools.
Welcome to join the Group

Re-born Young

Thanks to the great efforts being made by the youth of  modern India and for the copy of 'The Ocean in a Drop' gifted to me by a friend and mentor, today I can claim to have made a step not toward rebirth but a 're-born' mind of a young person!

"You-ng", ... when there is the ecosystem to help you find the 'you' there will be  'natural growth'. Have used the first part of the word for you and the later for the words natural  and growth. See how the word young should be understood, and am sure the book will help you find the youth within and ensure that the young get their true place. Often we just read a book, sometimes we do research, we may only do a review, here is one book that though full of facts, is not fiction but a real narrative and i dare say a fast paced read too. Enjoyed the book cover to cover, and will have this on my desk as a reference and use it as a 'Gita' in my efforts toward helping 'youth engaging society'.

Inside-out is what we call real learning and our education system needs an overhaul, as it only provides 'outside' learning. Self-awareness is the foundation of learning, The Drop in the Ocean goes on to quote the Vice Chancellor of Delhi University as saying the learning is only knowledge till you relate it to yourself. He teaches mathematics and he tells his students to apply all he teaches in their real lives and forget whatever they cant. He's right and education should start from the feet and move up to our head, rather than the other way round. Only then does it become learning.

Today the most important way we can work for 'youth engaging society' is by ensuring that we trust the young, and have them lead us. Given the space and due ownership of action, the youth will find themselves, all we need is unbiased facilitators who can support young people through the stages of group development. This is beyond handholding and creates the need for quality mentoring, youth must decide and be given the opportunity to lead. The word LEAD must mean Live, Educate, Achieve and Develop. At YES, for us there is not just 'Learning' but it is 'Living' that matters more, and thus our word lead begins first with 'live'.

Thank you to the large number of advocates and practitioners who are making the 5th space for the youth a reality, as this will really be the first step to be re-born young!

http://www.oceaninadrop.org/content/fifthspace.php
Published by SAGE
The Ocean in a Drop
Inside-out Youth Leadership
Ashraf Patel
Meenu Venkateswaran
Kamini Prakash
Arjun Shekhar
 -  The book review has been done by Sandeep Dutt and you contact him by email sd@ebd.in

Five Skills Designers Have That Global Development Needs | Poverty on GOOD

Five Skills Designers Have That Global Development Needs | Poverty on GOOD

With all this talk about “innovation,” where are the designers, the technologists, and the entrepreneurs? The folks behind these initiatives are still folks with international and economic development backgrounds, economics and finance. If they’re serious about innovative approaches, it’s time creative problem solvers are added to the equation. Specifically, here are five strengths designers have that the development industry direly needs:

Read on...
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