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Life Skill Education
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In a country where close to a third of the population is under the age of fifteen, the potential for social change clearly rests with the youth. In rural Gurgaon, however, low literacy, gender inequality and limited awareness of reproductive health and family planning severely restricts the options available to village youth. The average age of marriage is fourteen years for girls and seventeen years for boys, and on average, each family has six children. The status of women is very low; a local saying defines a good daughter-in-law as “one who finishes the day’s work, feeds the family, and goes to sleep on an empty stomach without a whimper."
The Foundation’s Life Skill Education (LSE) program aims to empower youth with knowledge and skills, so as to enable them to make well-informed life decisions. It provides informal education to adolescents – primarily girls – and supports schools.
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Activities in progress:
Educating girls
Family Life Education centers provide six-month courses to uneducated girls between eleven and nineteen years of age.
The girls are trained six hours each day in: |
- Literacy (based on the State Resource Center, Jamia Millia Islamia curriculum).
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Life skills, including reproductive health, family planning, household economics, socializing, team building, leadership skills, legal rights, gender and social issues (based on the Center for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) curriculum)
- Skill building, such as cutting and tailoring, beautician training, embroidery, and mehendi
- Indoor recreational activities
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School-going girls attend a sixteen-day camp, where they learn about life skills (CEDPA curriculum) for four hours a day.
Mobilizing young men
Youth clubs are set up to bring young men together, to provide a platform for recreation, and to involve them in the development activities of the village. For instance, the village youth have revived natural water springs, planted trees around schools and tutored school children. Life skills camps are also conducted to enable them to socialize and to address issues such as reproductive health, family planning and personal goal setting.
Involving parents
Workshops and focused group discussions are held with parents to promote understanding between generations, and to discuss issues such as the age of marriage and the need for educating the girl child.
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| Supporting schools |
- Infrastructure development
- Capacity building of Village Education Committees (VEC)
- Improving the quality of education (provision of temporary teachers and teacher training)
- Setting up libraries
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| Click here for Life Skill Education FAQ's |
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