Udaan Life Skills
This global life skills program equips young people between 14-18 years from the marginalized groups with a range of skills that will help them stay in school and get education, professional skills and the desired confidence to succeed in life.
Over the next decade, approximately 300 million young people will enter the workforce in India. A major challenge that India faces today is to ensure employability opportunities for youth, inspire in them the flexibility to learn new and innovative skills and instill in them a strong work ethic. As defined by the World Heath Organization, life skills are the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enables individuals to deal effectively with daily challenges.
The Udaan Life Skills Program is implemented by three partner organizations, all with enriched experience of working with disadvantaged communities. Being an initiative of GE and Pearson Foundation, this program is now being developed and scaled by QUEST Alliance and Youth Reach. Previously known as GE Life skills program, it is now being branded as the Udaan Life skills program.
The core competencies of this program are:
• Problem solving like managing conflicts.
• Personal competency, decision-making, entrepreneurship and getting started.
• Effective work habits of team work, workplace protocol, time management.
• Healthy lifestyle like substance abuse prevention, nutrition, STD/ HIV/ AIDS prevention, hygiene.
• Diversity and respect for difference and values.
• Service learning on civic responsibility and community service.
Facts on the programme
Program impact
• Program effectiveness is measured by evaluating the number of young people in school or employed six months after participating in the program. With a target of 80% in India, the achievable rate was over 86% and has completed its 3 year cycle.
• After nearly three years of project implementation and impact evaluation, the program has improved competencies across three life skills categories - in reducing school drop out and increasing employment, and in helping at-risk youth dramatically while increasing their self-confidence and hope in the future.
Beneficiaries
• Udaan life skill programme reached out to 18,612 youth including 8845 boys and 9767 girls. This includes 9915 children participated in school programme (5047 boys and 4868 girls) and 8697 youths (3798 boys and 4899 girls) attended udaan life skill programme in vocational training set ups.
• During the project period, 464 trainers have been trained and is being implemented across 19 NGOs in Delhi, Bangalore and Hyderabad.
• 601 copies of the curriculum of life skills toolkit were printed and distributed in various languages including English, Hindi, Telugu and Kannada. It includes 312 copies in English and 206 in Hindi, 50 in Kannada and 33 in Telugu.
Locations
• Delhi
• Bangalore (Karnataka)
• Bhimavaram and Hyderabad ( Andhra Pradesh)
Partners involved
• Being an initiative of GE and Pearson Foundation, this program was managed and scaled by Youth Reach. Youth Reach was managing the implementation of curriculum including train the trainer activity and evaluation.
• Implementing partners: Hope Foundation, SNS Foundation, Prayas, Don Bosco, VIDYA, Vidya & Child, SARD, Shine Foundation, Smile Foundation, Hope Foundation, BREADS, Dream a Dream, APSA, Dream School Foundation, Unnati, Janodaya, Sahara, Byrraju Foundation, Dr. Reddy’s Foundation
• Funders: GE Foundation, USAID, IYF
QUEST's Technical Contribution
QUEST Alliance is involved in further modification of curriculum based on learner’s need and also helped in scaling of the project with adding few more partners.
Current status and outlook
Building on successes and lessons learned, partners in the program are working with a local network of partners to scale-up through master training programme. Further modification of curriculum is ongoing, based on feedback and comments received from the learner and trainers.
