YUVA Project | Community Welfare Society

YUVA (Youth For Unity And Voluntary Action)

Work with youth in 6 slums began in 2016. These slums are situated at Sector-6, Shitalpara, Madhusudhanpalli, Malgodam, Sector 2 and Gopabandhupalli. The objective of the project is to motivate, help and empower the youth to deal with the problems they face and become productive citizens. The project deals with some of the major problems the youth face like high dropout rates from schools, lack of decent jobs, addiction to alcohol and intoxicants, inferiority complex and coping mechanism through the formation of peer groups and parents inability to guide their children. The project is preventive rather than curative. The curative objective of healing those who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, violence, gangsterism etc. are often ineffective, time consuming and is of limited scope.

The project has a project co-ordinator, 15 animators who work part time to help in the animation and organization of SHGs among the youth, three member training team who trains youth leaders through Youth Parliament conducted at 4 places in a month, tuition teachers for school going children, teachers for tailoring, Beautician course and Computer Course are recognized by NSDC (National Skill Development Corporation).

There are approximately 1800 youth living in the project area. We have been able to involve close to half of them in YUVA programme.

Project country: India

Project region/place: Rourkela

Planned duration: On-going Project

December 2023

Detailed Project Description

a. Geographical
Community Welfare Society (CWS) has been working in the slums of Rourkela as a registered Society from 1977. Rourkela city is divided into two parts, namely, Steel Township and Civil Township. Steel Township is the well-planned area of Rourkela which is divided into 21 sectors and is administered by Rourkela Steel Plant. Civil Township is the town which grew up adjacent to the steel plant and is divided into 33 wards and is administered by the municipality. Earlier the slums were concentrated in the civil township, but as the city grew, slums have sprung up in the steel township as well.

CWS started a project called YUVA among the youth from the slums in 2016. The project has continued ever since with certain modifications. It covers youth living in the six slum clusters situated at Sector-6, Shitalpara, Madhusudhanpalli, Malgodam, G Block (Sector-2) and Gopabandhupalli.

b. Educational and Economical
A study of 870 youth from the project area in the middle of 2022 showed that 388 are studying in high school, 176 in college, and 21 in technical and vocational institutes while 87 are school dropouts.

With regards to employment, 59 are casual workers, 17 work in the shops, 33 in factories and 89 are unemployed.

c. Socio-cultural
Most of the youth belong to Dalits, tribals or other backward classes. Though traditionally people belonging to these groups are considered lower in the caste hierarchy, youth belonging to these groups do not care much about these traditional ideas of caste superiority. Young age combined with exposure to the wider world mainly through smart phones with cheap data charges (730 GB of data costing 3000 rupees for 4G under annual plan) is bringing about tremendous socio-cultural changes among the young people. It has made them more confident, knowledgeable, impatient, and defiant. Older generation throughout history have found the younger generation defying age-old values. Today the speed of socio-cultural change is so rapid and unpredictable.

d. Who initiated the project?
The project evolved from active involvement of CWS in the lives of slums dwellers. Youth as a group is more a problem than a promise in any society. Youth becomes more of a problem in the harsh environment of the slums. The project was initiated by Fr. Bennichan K. Peter SVD, Secretary of CWS in association with staff of CWS with long years of experience in working in the slums.

e. How was the need for the project assessed?
CWS has been working with the youth in 6 slums of Rourkela from July 2016. From the beginning the need of the project was assessed taking into consideration the concerns, problems and challenges faced by the youth and possible ways to deal with them. The experience of working with the youth over the years helps us to fine tune the project and make it more relevant and useful to the youth.
The primary target group is youth living in the slums under the project area.

a. How many persons belong to the group?
There are approximately 1800 youth living in the project area. 1139 youth are associated with the project now as members of 100 SHG groups. Among them728 are girls and 411 are boys.

b. What age groups are involved?
Age group involved in the project belong to14 to 25 years.

c. Why was the target group chosen?
There was no special selection mechanism. All those willing to participate in the programmes and activities on a regular basis were chosen. In fact, youth lack enthusiasm to join the SHGs as it puts some restriction on their innate desire to be free and do whatever they like not being bothered about the consequences of their action.
Youth is a stage in life where youngsters face a lot of problems, and the harsh environment of the slums makes the problems of youth more intense. The major problems the youth face in the slums are as follows :

High dropout rates from schools which close the window of opportunity for gainful employment through higher education.

Shortage of decent jobs. The jobs which are easily available are low paying, casual in nature, sometimes hazardous with no job security, fixed working hours or social benefits.

Easy availability and widespread use of alcohol, nicotine products, drugs (both natural and synthetic) and the addiction they create- which leads to health problems, financial ruin, and depression.

A new problem among the youth is the widespread use of smartphone and their addiction to it. They live in a world of make believe and spent too much of their time and life on the phone. There are other problems like cyber bullying and financial frauds. After covid pandemic many are impoverished and in need of money. And instant loan scheme apps with no collateral have mushroomed on the internet. Most of these apps are illegal and they entrap and threaten their customers. Recently there was a notorious case of a woman using internet to honey trap her victims. Police found that she accumulated 300 million rupees in 4 years through this nefarious activity. The youth can easily get into the clutches of cyber crooks and conmen.

Inferiority complex arising from poverty, joblessness, insecure future, and the hopelessness arising from the environment in which they live with hardly any role models to look upto. This problem is dealt with by joining gangs of peer groups with loud talk, foul language, and aggressive behaviour.

Generational gap between parents and youth and their inability to guide their children.

4. Strategy

The objective of the project is to motivate, help and empower the youth to become productive citizens, an asset to the society rather than a liability. The objective is mainly a preventive one. The curative objective of healing those who are addicted to alcohol, drugs, uncontrolled sex, violence, gangsterism etc. are often ineffective, time consuming and is of limited scope.

The project will contribute to solve or at least ameliorate the problems mentioned in point 3 in the following manner :

Next year we will run special tuition classes for children studying from class 1 to 8 at six centers with 6 teachers and will cover approximately 150 students. These classes enable the children to understand the lessons better and motivate and encourage them to continue with their schooling. Last year we had planned to help 40 students with their higher education but helped 48 instead. (Annexure-1 will provide details about the students).

In the slums we will run 4 training programmes for skill enhancement and job creation. On the demand from youth, we are starting a new course on smartphone repair of 6 months duration. It will train 15 students. We will train 100 students in Diploma in Computer Application (DCA). It is an entry level course which is recognised by National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC). 80 girls will be trained as beauticians. 100 youth will be trained as tailors.

CWS hospital now has a retired M.B.B.S. doctor who has a diploma in psychological medicine. He has long years of experience in dealing with alcoholics and drug addicts among the labourers of Coal India Limited. We will use his services to interact with our youth and youth leaders on how not to fall into the trap of drug addiction. We are not including the fees for his services in the project budget since we haven’t fine-tuned the nitty-gritty of this programme.

We will make use of youth parliament, a regular training programme for youth leaders, to sensitise them to the problems smartphones cause and how they can play havoc with their lives. As youth use smartphones mainly for entertainment, they will also be made aware how it is a wonderful tool for learning, information, and skill enhancement as well.

As peer pressure can lead to bad behaviour it can also lead to good behaviour. Youth groups exert pressure on deviants to behave properly. They help individuals with emotional and behavioural problems to overcome them and serve as a constant source of support and inspiration. Youth leaders are trained on a regular basis on how to deal with the problems of individual members or the group as a whole. Youth Parliament is conducted in 4 places once in two months where group leaders participate. It is a forum for troubleshooting of various problems of the youth. We will organize a youth convention both for entertainment and education. Competitions will be organized which will be interspersed with entertaining programmes with themes on drug addiction and deviant behaviour.

Perennial problems of generational gap and youth rebellion and deviant behaviour are addressed through existing women’s self-help groups and youth self-help groups.

Long term implication of the project for the region and the beneficiaries.
The project to some extent will help the youth to protect themselves from the dangers of alcoholism, drug abuse, premarital sex and unwanted pregnancies, sexually transmitted diseases, smartphone addiction and its abuse. It will help them to complete their education, learn new skills and lead better lives as productive citizens.

4(b). Project results

Results	Activity	Indicator	Time	Resources (costs)
Form 15 new SHG groups and guide 100 existing SHGs	Appointment of 13 part time animators. Appointment of a project coordinator	15 new SHGs 100 functional old SHGs	Dec 2023	Payment of part time animators covered by CWS hospital Salary of project coordinator covered by project fund
Train 230 youth leaders	Training of leaders through youth parliament. Appointment of training team	Number of leaders trained Number of youth parliament conducted	Dec 2023	Cost covered by project fund
Interactive sessions with youth and youth leaders	Appointment of a counsellor	Number of interactive sessions conducted	Dec 2023	Cost covered by CWS
60 youth who passed computer course DCA	Appointment of 3 computer teachers Signing of Annual Maintenance contract for 36 computers	Number of students completing DCA successfully	Dec 2023	Cost covered by project fund and beneficiaries
100 youth trained as tailors	Appointment of 2 tailoring teachers	Number of trained tailors. Number of tailors who are employed	Dec 2023	Cost covered by CWS
80 youth trained as beauticians	Appointment of an instructor	Number of trained beauticians	Dec 2023	Cost covered by beneficiaries
15 smart phone repairers	Approval of the candidates eligible for help	Number of youths trained as smartphone repairers	Dec 2023	Half the cost covered by project fund and the rest by students
Quarterly audit of 115 SHGs Documentation of monthly project progress reports	Appointment of a part time project implementation manager	Number of SHGs audited quarterly. Number of monthly progress reports filed	Dec 2023	Part time salary of project implementation manager covered by project fund
40 youth helped financially for higher education	Collection of applications of deserving candidates. Approval of the candidates eligible for help	Number of youths helped for higher education	Dec 2023	Cost covered by project fund

5. Project Budget

Sl no	Particulars	Amount in INR
1.	Salary of project coordinator with statutory contribution @Rs. 20,000 x 12	2,40,000
2.	Travel expenses of project coordinator @Rs. 3,000 x 12	36,000
3.	Part time salary to 13 animators @Rs. 2,500 x 13 x 12	3,90,000
4.	Remuneration to 3 trainers for 24 youth parliament @Rs. 400 x 3 x 24	28,800
5.	Snacks for training programme of 230 youth leaders for 24 sessions @Rs. 2,500 x 24	60,000
6.	Remuneration for 2 tailoring teachers @Rs. 5,000 x 2 x 12	1,20,000
7.	Payment to beautician instructor for 4 training programmes @Rs. 10,000 x 4	40,000
8.	Annual maintenance expenses of 36 computers	44,000
9.	Remuneration of 3 computer teachers @Rs. 3,000 x 3 x 12	1,08,000
10.	Remuneration of smartphone repair teacher @Rs. 15,000 x 6 months	90,000
11.	Part time payment of project implementation manager	60,000
12.	Educational help for 40 youth for higher studies @Rs. 10,000 x 40	4,00,000
13.	Flex and hand bills for training and awareness programme @Rs. 1,500 x 24	36,000
14.	Fortnightly Evaluation @Rs. 1,800 x 24	43,200
	Total	16,96,000