On January 10th , we took 12 students on a tour of 3 of Anantapur’s most reputed skill centers (Adi Foundation, RUDSETI, Accion Fraterna Driving School). They saw the training equipment and living facilities and interacted with the management and staff. It went well. We plan to follow-up with the youth to see if they are taking concrete action based on what they say, and that is the real impact we want to see. We are positive about it, as we feel we are filling a big information gap. And seeing is believing.
This is Bhavishyath Counselling’s new initiative to address a big challenge in skilling – getting youth to know that there are skill centers and the kind of opportunities they have there.
My feeling is that if we could do it for 500 youth a year, we could start seeing a good improvement in enrollment. We don’t need to take every youth in the target group on this tour – you need to take enough number (and design it smartly so that the word spreads), so that after a year or two it becomes part of the community knowledge in the district).
The cost is not low, about 250/- per youth, as we cover the cost of travel from their homes to the meeting point, as well as their lunch. We believe this is needed otherwise youth simply won’t come (The cost of bus travel in rural AP is surprisingly high. We are told that it is much cheaper in neighbouring TN).
We plan to try one more such visit this month, with women students. In this case, the difficulty will be with them or their parents not agreeing to come out on their own on this kind of trip. We are looking into ways to solve this.
Bhavishyath Counselling 