In today’s world, the youth is facing most of the hardships and lack of belongingness within society. Youth constitute a big chunk of the population, yet it remains the most subjugated and marginalized. The difficult circumstances that young people face because of limited opportunities for education and training, viable employment and health and social services, and because of a growing incidence of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency is deteriorating the chance of India’s quest for achieving the status of a developed Nation.
Their imagination, ideals, considerable energies and vision are essential for the continuing development of the societies in which they live. Do you want to attract donors for your project specifically based on youth empowerment? Are you a non-governmental organization searching for youth empowerment project? Do you want to design your own project proposal based on the related subject.
This project is designed to identify, tap and optimally harness the potential of the under-privileged classes of society in such a way as to strike a judicious balance between their own quality of life as well as towards their meaningful contribution to the society/nation and to see a health, gender balanced, prosperous and productive society that lives in a conducive environment.
Introduction
In 1995, the world youth population—defined by the United Nations as the age cohort 15- 24—is estimated to be 1.03 billion, or 18 per cent of the total world population. As per the 2001 Census of India, population age 15-24 years accounts for 195 million of the 1,029 million of India‘s population. In other words, every fifth person in India belongs to the age group 15-24 years. This population, which is the focus of this proposal, is identified by the United Nations Population Fund (United Nations, 2009) as youth or the youth population. By 2011, this age group is expected to grow to 240 million (Office of the Registrar General, 2006) and account for a slightly higher proportion of the total population than in 2001.
Definitions of youth have changed continuously in response to fluctuating political, economic and sociocultural circumstances. Young people in industrialized countries comprise a relatively smaller proportion of the total population because of generally lower birth rates and longer life expectancy. They comprise a social group that faces particular problems and uncertainties regarding its future, problems that relate in part to limited opportunities for appropriate employment.
Many developing countries are also experiencing unprecedented rates of rural-urban migration by young people. The difficult circumstances that people experience in many developing countries are often even more difficult for young people because of limited opportunities for education and training, viable employment and health and social services, and because of a growing incidence of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency.
Their imagination, ideals, considerable energies and vision are essential for the continuing development of the societies in which they live. Thus, there is special need for new impetus to be given to the design and implementation of youth policies and programmes at all levels. The ways in which the challenges and potentials of young people are addressed by policy will influence current social and economic conditions and the well-being and livelihood of future generations.
Executive Summary of the Project
In today’s world the youth is facing the most of hardships and lack of belongingness within the society. Youth in India constitute a big chunk of the population, yet it remains the most subjugated and marginalized. The difficult circumstances that young people face because of limited opportunities for education and training, viable employment and health and social services, and because of a growing incidence of substance abuse and juvenile delinquency is deteriorating the chance of India’s quest for achieving the status of a developed Nation. Their imagination, ideals, considerable energies and vision are essential for the continuing development of the societies in which they live.
The organization here is focusing on the most underprivileged youth residing in urban slums, surviving on meagre of resources and constantly seeking out a purpose for their life. The organization plans to work with the youth who never have been nurtured and reared in a way to develop into a productive generation, because of which the petty crimes in the community is constantly on rise. The delinquency amongst them is not detrimental for the youth only but the whole urban slum society is on the verge of eruption, as they had no means to devise a solution for the same.
The ABC has the past record of working with the youth for their development and inclusive growth and in continuation of that only it proposes to obtain the resources for the Youth Empowerment Initiative, which has the potential of integrating the values of a good and productive citizen in youth, motivating them to lead a normal life by providing them a platform to develop and showcase their skills.
The project proposes to select 50 most marginalized and vulnerable group of youth within the slum of xxxx and develop them into a productive and empowerment citizen. The proposal will need resources amounting to **** which taking into consideration the purpose it will serve for the society is a justified amount.
Justification of Project Proposal
Statement of the Problem
The urban slums in India are facing a transforming phase when the second generation of the migrants are finding about solutions, measures to improve their situation and DE stigmatize themselves.
The emergence of urban slums in Delhi started during 1960-70s, the time when the industrialization processes was rapidly increasing the demand of manual labour. The people migrated to cities had no legal status and were the most subjugated group in the society. They had very less of resource to survive upon with no measures by the govt. towards the acknowledgement of their existence in the cities.
The generation succeeding the first migrants had a very tough time settling in such environment where every provision of the social justice was trampled upon by the society. They were deprived of even the most basic of the amenities such as education, health, safe drinking water and employment. The lack of these provisions gave rise to severely delinquent youth who were suffering at the hands of the negligent community and government.
The marginalized second generation of the people settled in the community (youth members) are facing a plethora of problems which are:
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- Inequities in social, economic and political conditions, including racism and xenophobia, which lead to increasing hunger, deterioration in living conditions and poverty among youth and to their marginalization as refugees, displaced persons and migrants;
- Continuing discrimination against young women and men and insufficient access for them to equal opportunities in employment and education;
- High levels of youth unemployment, including long-term unemployment;
- Increasing incidence of diseases, such as malaria, the human immunodeficiency virus and the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS), and other threats to health, such as substance abuse and psychotropic substance addiction, smoking and alcoholism;
- Inadequate opportunities for vocational education and training, especially for persons with disabilities;
- Changes in the role of the family as a vehicle for shared responsibility and socialization of youth;
- Lack of opportunity for young people to participate in the life of society and contribute to its development and well-being;
- Prevalence of debilitating disease, hunger and malnutrition that engulfs the life of many young people;
- Increasing difficulty for young people to receive family life education as a basis for forming healthy families that foster sharing of responsibilities ; and
- Continuing deterioration of the global environment resulting from unsustainable patterns of consumption and production, particularly in urban societies, which is a matter of grave concern, aggravating poverty and imbalances;
Priority Needs
After consulting with the community members and various other stakeholders the priority need of the youth is the inculcation of social values and norms of the society. Organization had several sessions with the community members to decide the reasons behind youth members of their community taking the illegal and non-productive way to leading their life. The elders lamented the lack of efforts and time given by them towards rearing their children, unaccepted social behaviour by community elders in presence of youth, easy availability of drugs, alcohol, opportunities for flesh trade and their negative socio- economic status etc.
The Proposed approach
The proposed approach decided mutually by implementing agency, community members and other stakeholders are:
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- Inculcation of social values in youth.
- Exposure to developed and proper way of living in and outside the community.
- De stigmatizing them in Police peripherals, for the maligned status of youth gives ample opportunity to police to be always suspicious of them.
- Providing vocational skills to youths in trades with established market demand.
The implementing organization
The organisation is dedicatedly working towards empowering the youth in the urban slums since the very first day of its inception in 2002, through several measures such as vocational training, (1200 youths trained), coaching, counselling and by several other measures. The organization has the expertise of relating with the youth and working towards their holistic empowerment with ample participation from all the stakeholders. Organization has the distinctive know how of making youth participate in our programmes and avail all of our services.
The need for a holistic measure to work with those who are extremely marginalized and subjugated was always felt by the organization and in continuation of our efforts we are proposing the proposal which seeks to counter the maligning status of the youth in severely under developed slum of ABC area of xxxx and provide them with ample opportunities to decide the course of their life.
Background of the Organization
1. Establishment
‘The ABC’ registered in 2002 is an all India Character organization, dedicated to imparting knowledge, skills and awareness amongst the poorest strata of the society with emphasis on employment generation, looking after destitute, empowering women, water harvesting, preventing AIDS and other health hazards, drug de-addiction, witness protection and awareness about environment and hygiene.
2. Governance
The organization has a General Assembly consisting of founding members and other members who have joined the association after its establishment to oversee and deal with all policy issues. It has also a managing board of eleven members to decide on major administrative matters and oversee major developments and guide its operations. There is a management committee consisting department heads and chaired by General Secretary to deal and execute day-to-day administrative and managerial matters.
The General Secretary, responsible to the Board of directors, is entrusted with the main task of overseeing and implementing decisions passed by the General Body and Board of Directors. He also manages the day-to-day activities and operations of the organization.
The organization has four major departments, namely Administration, Finance, Program and Public Relations departments, and each department has also three to five sections.
3.Vision, Mission and Objective of the Organization
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- Vision
- To see a health, gender balanced, prosperous and productive society that lives in a conducive environment.
- Mission
- The organization envisions to provide the skill & knowledge to the under privilege Strata of the society so that they can recognize and use the resources around them for their holistic empowerment.
- General Objective
- To identify, tap and optimally harness the potential of the under-privileged classes of the society in such a way as to strike a judicious balance between their own quality of life as well as towards their meaningful contribution to the society/nation.
- Vision
Activities of the Organisation
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- Learning Centre
- Learning Centre was established in the year 2002 for educating the children of the weaker sections belonging to the under Privileged class of xxxx especially for school drop-out and child labour. It has strength of 250 regular students and 09 staff. The children are trained for 6 month to one year in the learning centre and they are admitted to the nearby Government and private sector.
- Organizing SHGs
- ‘The ABC’ undertakes special efforts to motivate people particularly from socioeconomically weaker sections and those living in slums, tribal, rural areas, for self- employment. The information regarding major role of women in economic empowerment of community is disseminated to the people, which make formation of SHGs possible in highly marginalized areas.
- Organization has till now formed 12 SHGs, which are dedicatedly working towards resurrection of their social as well as economic status, resulting into acknowledgement of their role in community and improvement of living status.
- Vocational Training
- The ABC provides vocational training (cutting, tailoring and computer literacy) to the women and youth of xxxx, and xxx. Organization has trained more than 1200 youth in vocational training and remedial classes wherein, most of the beneficiaries are successfully placed in satisfactory jobs.
- Gender Resource Centre
- Also known as xxxxx is a pilot project of Delhi Govt. where the organization is entrusted with the responsibility to function as the single window clearance centre for all the 47 welfare schemes of Delhi Govt. and several others of Central govt.
- Career Guidance
- “The ABC’ regularly holds career guidance by experts from relevant fields in govt. school and community and makes special efforts to spend awareness for self-employment oriented vocational education and motivates youth as well as their parents to provide support to the youth in their efforts.
- Drug Awareness camp:
- “The ABC’ organizes camps in slum areas and locales inhabited by socially and financially disadvantaged strata not only for disseminating awareness about harmful effects of Drugs but also spread knowledge about methods for de-addiction. Until now, more than twenty six individuals in Subhash Camp, Sanjay Camp have benefited from the de- addiction drive launched by ‘The ABC’ in year 2010-2011.The drug awareness camps are one of the basic components of our role in community development.
- Legal Aid Camp:
- ‘The ABC’ organized legal aid camps at xxxx and other places for making available legal aid particularly to women and people from Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
- Disability Camp:-
- ‘The ABC’ not only spreads information and awareness among disabled/handicapped people about various beneficial schemes enunciated for them but it also makes concrete efforts to enable them to benefits from such schemes, financially and medically. As a result of these efforts by ‘The ABC’ fourteen physically disabled people were able to begin self- employment and four disabled people were treated successful surgical operations in special disability hospital of Sahibabad in the year to 2009-2010.
- Environment Camps
- The ABC’ organizes camps in xxxx to generate awareness and motivation regarding environments, de- pollution, plantation of trees, cleanness etc. These camps were fairly successful and made a tangible and lasting positive impact on the ecology of these areas.
- Health check-up camps
- Organization in partnership with Max health care is regularly organizing health check-up camps in the slums of xxxx and provides prescribed medicines for free of cost.
- Learning Centre
Target Group
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- Direct Target Group
- The youth of community would be the direct target group. It will mainly involve the youths who are perceived to be as the burden and non-productive members for the society. The vulnerability of the youth will be judged by the extent of his relevance in the society as well as the interest shown by him/her towards the “Youth Empowerment Initiative” Project. The organization will select 50 most vulnerable youth members of the community from which it expects at least 30 members to complete the project successfully.
- Intermediate Target Groups
- It will include Teachers and retired teachers, xxx Local opinion leaders, Delhi Police, Media Workers, Civil Society Organizations, Local community directly concerned with behavior problems of youth.
- Direct Target Group
Monitoring & Evaluation
Periodic monitoring focuses on the day-to-day activities of the project. It uses clearly stated activity indicators in the plan for monthly, quarterly and annual targets to be accomplished. Monitoring activity includes measuring the physical performances, budgetary utilization, quality and quantity of work done, correlation of the work done with the set objectives and the set plans and timetables. The Center Director employed to run the center shall conduct the day-to-day monitoring activities of the project and report to the program manager of the organization. Project evaluation will be jointly held with all stakeholders including, donors, and community elders in the project area, beneficiaries, and relevant government counterparts every year before the starting of another budget year.
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- Indicators for evaluation
- Financial system, cost effectiveness and budget utilization
- Number of trainees who manage to generate income and self-supportive citizens
- Number of youths mobilized and sensitized on HIV/AIDS prevention and other health related issues.
- Number of clients who visited center
- Number of youth employed after trained in our training center.
- Amount of money generated by our organization through income generating activities to finance its projects
- Reduction of criminal activities in the area
- Indicators for evaluation
Sustainability
The project “Youth Empowerment Initiative” is mutually agreed plan of implementing agency, community members and other stakeholders. The project is highly beneficial not only for the youth of the community but for the community as a whole. It envisages the development in the community which its inhabitants had been dreaming of since the time of their settlement there. The project has the capacity to turn the non- productive youth of the community into the responsible citizens who will work towards holistic development of himself as well as his society.
As the project is highly beneficial for the society its day to day needs will be taken care of by the community members and other stakeholders.
After 1 year of its completion, the project will be self-sufficient as the resource for its sustenance will be raised from the vocational training center and other source
