Making rural students future-ready with career counselling

LUCKNOW : The Institute for Career Studies (ICS) conducted a three-day professional development programme, from March 2-4, to train 26 partner staff of NGO Plan India in providing career counselling support to rural students in six districts of Uttar Pradesh and two of Uttarakhand.

The districts in Uttar Pradesh are Ambedkarnagar, Mirzapur, Bhadohi, Lucknow, Maharajganj and Ghazipur while those in Uttarakhand are Chamoli and Uttarkashi.

Dr Amrita Dass, founder-director, ICS reiterated the need for trainees to create and build a network of stakeholders, including government officials, in their districts.

“This will help us take information about government recruitment and training schemes to rural youths in a timely manner. Many times, these schemes remain under utilised due to lack of information,” she said. Participation certificates and mementos were also distributed to the trainees.

Uma Shankar Singh (58), who has over 35 years of experience in education and development sector, said this was the first time he had attended a session dedicated to career counselling.

“I work in Ghazipur as part of the NGO Grameen Vikas Sansthan. Not only do we provide better skill training than many of the ITIs and polytechnics, we also ensure placement for our trainees. However, we have seen that out of 10 rural youngsters placed, eight do not join. This is especially true for girls mainly due to parental pressure. After today’s session, I feel that parental counselling is a must. Parents must not decide their child’s career. Now, we will rope in motivators to take the message of career counselling to the students in Ghazipur,” he said.

Pramila Devi, 46, a Plan India partner staff working in Mirzapur said, “If you ask a child what he wants to become, hemay say ‘doctor’, ‘engineer’, ‘teacher’…children have dreams. What they lack is a plan to back those dreams.”

THIS WILL HELP US TAKE INFORMATION ABOUT GOVERNMENT RECRUITMENT AND TRAINING SCHEMES TO RURAL YOUTHS..