Young and Restless India » Volunteer

Teach for India – NGO with a Mission

Raj — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 02:31:40 +0000

Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State for US, currently visiting India joined with Aamir Khan in a conference on Education at St. Xavier’s college at Mumbai. They found a common ground in challenging bright youths to take care of millions of Indian citizens that falling behind.

Outlook India’s recent article titled “Teaching for India” gives following statistics:

The average literacy rate hovers around 60% in India (for women, the number is much lower)
World Bank statistics show that fewer than 40% of adolescents in India attend secondary school.
According to a recent study, 15 out of every 100 Indian kids will never go to school. And among the 85 kids who do, 50% of them will drop out before the 5th grade.

The Outlook article characterizes this as an educational crisis, where almost 40% of the population is under 15 years of age, these trends are troubling, and can prove disastrous over the long-term if they are left unchecked. The article notes that this educational crisis is exacerbated by severe gender and caste disparities and can impede India’s ambition of Global power.

As Hillary Clinton challenged, the educated youth can volunteer to help spread the literacy in India. Recently launched Teach for India which is modeled after successful Teach for America program will place outstanding college graduates and young professionals as teachers in India’s low-income schools for two years. The aim is to narrow the educational gap and expand the educational opportunities available to thousands of underprivileged children. This is exciting because Gen YRI can take a leadership role in solving one of the major stumbling block India is facing in its march towards prosperity.

Attracting Youngsters in Agriculture Sector

Raj — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 01:09:31 +0000

Picture by Laura Dunnmark at Flickr http://www.flickr.com/photos/lauradunnmark/

More than 70% of India’s population depend on agriculture. With the advent of YRI generation now, more farmers in next couple of decades will be young. Swaminathan, who is the chairman of National Commission on Agriculture says that a small-farm management revolution will not be possible in the country without attracting the new generation into the farming sector and promoting the farmers of 21st century. Read more about his views in Rediff article titled “How to attract youngsters into Agriculture”. Mr. Swaminathan says unless farming becomes intellectually satisfying and economically rewarding, the younger generation will not take up farming. Relevant mechanization and technological up gradation through initiatives such as the biotechnology movement must be conducted to make agriculture attractive for the young people.

Stressing that the biggest challenge before country’s agriculture today was how to make small farm economically viable and beneficial to the farmers, Swaminathan said that benefits of mass production technology should be combined with Mahatma Gandhi’s concept of production by masses without affecting the individuality of farm holding.

URI Young Leaders Conference

Akshata — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:57:23 +0000

URI (United Religions Initiative), India chapter had a conference for the Young Leaders. Check out the video. These are India’s future leaders.

Empowering Rural Women to bring Electricity to Villages.

Raj — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:19:32 +0000

In India, 220,000 villages lack electricity. Development organizations like the Barefoot College have focused on empowering women to help these rural villages. Solar projects which brings solar-powered lights is run by the Barefoot College in Tilonia, founded by Bunker Roy in 1972 to help make Indian villagers become self-sufficient, with an emphasis on using women’s skills. The college (www.barefootcollege.org) has now reached out to more than 125,000 people in 160 villages over an area of 500 square miles, addressing such problems as sanitation and safe drinking water by building toilets and underground reservoirs, where rainwater is harvested and stored. It has also focused attention on rural unemployment, income generation and waste recycling.

A key priority is the education of girls, normally taboo in rural Rajasthan. Furthermore, the college trains girls and boys from other Indian states to work together, discover their own skills or acquire new ones, and set themselves up with forms of income generation. Over the years, these women solar engineers have not only gained acceptance in the community but earned respect as trainers of women from other Indian states and from Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ghana, Syria and Uganda.

‘One Billion Voters’ campaign

Raj — Mon, 11 May 2009 22:57:25 +0000

Janagraha, a non-profit organization based in Bangalore has teamed up with several companies to launch a campaign called ‘One Billion Voters’. Goal it to mobilize and persuade India’s politically apathetic middle-class youth to vote in 2009’s month-long general elections. In 2004, the last general election, national turnout was 58 per cent, but in urban areas voter levels were five per cent lower than in rural parts of the country. To change that attitude in urban youth, creative advertisements are unleashed in print and TV media according to TheNational Article “Drives focus on apathetic Indian”