Changing young lives

Imagine trying to live a day on Rs 32. As per the Indian constitution, you fall under the poverty line if you earn less than Rs 32 a day. As part of the Samvidhan LIVE — The Jagrik Project, you get to experience how to get by on that amount in a day, among other activities. “This task will include your travel, your food and any other necessary expense that you might think of,” says Musheer Ahmed, the associate coordinator at the Youth Parliament Foundation (TYPF), which began in 2002 as a meeting space for young people to discuss ideas and learn about issues that they were passionate about in a safe, open and non-judgmental space.

“The Jagrik project has been organised by ComMutiny — The Youth Collective (CYC) and TYPF has mobilised 20 people for this project,” shares Musheer, who is anchoring this project for TYPF. The Jagrik Project started with a two-day orientation program, where the Jagriks, (Jagruk Nagrik — Aware Citizens) between the ages of 16 to 30 years, were made aware of the fundamental rights and duties.  “These activities are performed on a weekly basis. Jagriks pick these activities from a bunch of cards. It is a way of experiential learning and it’s best done through task-based activities. On completion of these tasks, you would be awarded few points,” shares Musheer.

The program has  engaged young Jagriks from different parts of the country and NGOs to experience the Constitutional rights and duties. It is a project that evokes empathy as young people get to experience very specific situations.

“There are several activities. Like one about freedom of movement. The activity requires people to talk to jail inmates in order to understand what exactly freedom of movement means to them,” shares Shruthi Basavaraj, program manager of Blending Spectrum at TYPF.

Ali has also been working with the ‘Blending Spectrum’ program at TYPF, which has been running for ten years. The program work with youth in Nizamuddin basti and tries to develop life and leadership skills. “World Health Organisation has defined few life skills and our programs are based on those skills. There are different curriculums that help community students in developing these skills. The students are also taught by peer educators, who are trained at TYPF,” says Musheer.

While they have been working on life skills program, they have also initiated a new pilot project which runs different clubs on science, arts and craft, theatre and spoken English. “College students will be running these clubs. We plan to run these for three months and take further action based on the results,” he shares.

Talking about how they select their curriculum, Shruthi says, “We look at the best practices that already exist and are guided by experts to develop these programs. The curriculum also depends on which demographic it is aimed at.”

TYPF helps reduce the gap between youth from different socio-economic backgrounds as well.