In this issue:-
Gandhi Camp for Adolescent Youth held in Olema, USA
"Health on Stage" – Closing Event
South Asia Social Forum in Bangladesh
India Has the Most Unemployable Population: Report
UN World Youth Report on Youth and Climate Change
Delhi ICYM initiated inter-faith dialogue
Gandhi Camp for Adolescent Youth
held in Olema, USA
The Gandhi Camp for Adolescent Youth (age 10-17) was held from August 6-13, 2011 at Vedanta Retreat Centre, Olema, USA. The Gandhi Youth camp gave an opportunity to youth to learn Gandhian principles of truthfulness, tolerance and self-help.
The camp was conducted by Dr. S. N. Subbarao, Gandhian philosopher and hosted by India Community Centre (ICC).
The main purpose of camp was to help young to inculcate the values of Self-help and self-discipline; Friendship and mutual respect; Service to others; Truth and honesty; Non-violence and love; Respect for the environment; Integrated physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual development.
The camp schedule includes the meditation, sharmdan (karma yoga), games and yoga. All religion prayers and songs are daily rituals of evening. The evening discussions include various topics like how to make world to better place to live etc. On last day of camp, camper presented the culture programme.
Dheyani Malde, a camper, share experience "When I first arrived, I was filled with nervousness and worries. I did not know anyone and what the camp was like. After the first day had passed, I became more confident and enjoyed myself. This has been one of the best camp experiences I have ever had to date."
Dheyani further add "These days were long, but we were kept busy. From dusk to dawn, there was something to do. Although I had to wake up early in the morning, a session of meditation wore my body and mind up. During meditation, all the campers would sing prayers of various religions led by Subba Rao ji. Yoga is a time of relaxation and calmness led by Vivek. When I first thought of community service (karmayoga), I thought of hard, never-ending labour. But I learned lots of information about nature and had an interesting experience. The scrumptious meals were deliciously cooked by the fellow campers."
"Gandhi Camp was a great experience for me. I had lots of fun and didn't have a chance to become bored."
According to another camper Karunya Venugopal, it is a different kind of camp hence being very interesting and thoroughly enjoyed.
The community service, which lasts three hours had tasks vary from gardening, raking, trailblazing, and weeding.
Afternoon games give new dimension to play. Yoga stretch muscle of body.
The evening discussions about topics such as what we can do to make the world a better place, provided the space to think to make peace full society where every one can live. It had wonderful experience at Gandhi Camp and strongly recommends this for future world leaders and peace-makers. (ICYO-Info)
"Health on Stage" – Closing Event
In August 2011 "Health on Stage" was initiated in south India (Bangalore, Chennai and Mysore). For six weeks, 21 young volunteers from 14 countries worked closely with the slum dwellers in Bangalore, villagers in Mysore and industrial workers in Chennai. The volunteers organised forum theatre performances with and for the local communities to promote public health dialogue. This is joint efforts of Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), Singapore with Coordinating Committee for International Voluntary Service (CCIVS) and Field Services & Inter-Cultural Learning (FSL) -India.
As a end of project, on 30th September 2011, the Open Day event will organize in Bangalore. At the "Open Day", participants of the project will share their experiences from the field with others.
South Asia Social Forum in Bangladesh
The South Asia Social Forum-SASF will be held in Dhaka, Bangladesh from November 18-22, 2011.
The main theme for the South Asia Social Forum 2011 Bangladesh was set "Democracy for Social Transformation in South Asia: Participation, Equity, Justice and Peace". This theme is to highlight and oppose the neo-liberal, hegemonic and authoritarian "poverty reduction" development policy and paradigm. The forum is intended to focus on this structural concern with a clear transformational agenda. However, there are various urgent and immediate economic, political and cultural concerns of the people, especially poor, women and marginalized communities, would be addressed in the forum. There are country specific issues and there are also regional and cross-country issues. All the issues are clustered in sub-themes.
The registration is open. Please note that participants or participating organizations have to bear the all the cost of participation and also pay the registration fee.
For registration please visit www.wsfsouthasiabd.org
India Has the Most Unemployable Population: Report
India has the largest, youngest population in the world. But it is also the most unemployable population as it lacks work skills that can make it employable.
According to a survey conducted by FICCI-Ernst & Young Paper, even though over 40 million people are registered in employment exchanges, only 0.2 million get jobs annually. Even startling is the fact that about 80% of the Indian workforce does not possess identifiable marketable skills.
Equally sad is the fact that the school dropout rate in India touches 56.8% by the time students reach the qualifying examination at the 10th standard which further leads to unemployability.
The survey found that only 25% of the Indian professionals are considered "employable" by multinationals and the difficulty of employers in India to fill job vacancies has increased to 67% in 2011 compared with 16% in last year.
It is estimated that over 75% of the new jobs to be created in India will be 'skill-based.' While the country's overall supply of highly skilled labour marginally exceeds demand, there is a shortage of adequately qualified (or employable) people. The study said this was primarily due to the fact that the Indian training institutions are heterogeneous in nature varying in quality of education and training provided by them.
"60%of India's 1.2 billion people are in the working age group. However, only 10% of the 300 million children in India between the age of 6 and 16 will pass school and go beyond. Only 5%of India's labour force in the age group 19-24 years is estimated to have acquired formal training," said S. Ramadorai, advisor to the Prime Minister in National Skill Development Council.
Understanding the issues, the government has already started reworking its vocational education framework to be more competitive and acceptable to the world market. Human Resource Development Minister Kapil Sibal said that since there was an acute shortage of labour at Tier 2 and Tier 3. It is anticipated that by 2020, about 220 million students will pass out from school, out of which, about 150 million will not enroll for college education. (Source: DNA)
UN World Youth Report on
Youth and Climate Change
United Nations released World Youth Report recently. The World Youth Report focus on youth and climate change, and is intended to highlight the important role young people play in addressing climate change, and to offer suggestions on how young people might be more effectively integrated as individuals and collective agents of change within the realm of climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The Report is designated to assist youth and youth organizations in educating themselves and to become more actively involved in combating the threat of climate change. It is also meant to affirm the status of young people as key stakeholders in the fight against climate change.
The publication comes at a time when efforts to address climate change are receiving unparalleled attention on the international arena, offering youth a unique opportunity for their voice to be heard in the debate.
The full World Youth Report is available at UN web at
http://www.un.org/esa/socdev/unyin/documents/wyr10/YouthReport-FINAL-web-single.pdf
Delhi ICYM initiated inter-faith dialogue
The Delhi unit of the Indian Catholic Youth Movement (ICYM) organized a first-of-its-kind inter-religious dialogue among the youth in the diocese.
"It was a training program for youth on inter-religious dialogue," said Father Chetan, Director of Delhi ICYM.
The three-day program began on 16th September 2011 with the aim to provide the knowledge about other religions to Christian youth.
The priest said that Christian youth these days were not aware about other religions. He added that the response among the youth about the program was very positive. According to Father Chetan, this will help promote peace and brotherhood in the society.
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Youth Information is published by
Indian Committee of Youth Organizations (ICYO)
194-A, Arjun Nagar, Safdarjang Enclave
New Delhi 110029, India
Phone: 91 9811729093 / 91 11 26183978 Fax 91 11 26198423
Email: icyoindia@gmail.com / icyo@icyo-india.org
Web: www.icyo.in / www.icyo-india.org
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Indian Committee of Youth Organizations (ICYO) is a registered non-profit, non-governmental network organization, committed in developing areas of mutual cooperation and understanding among different youth voluntary agencies, youth groups, clubs and individuals working in the field of youth welfare in India.
ICYO functions as an umbrella organization of youth NGOs in India. It's family consists of
over 411 organizations spread in 124 districts of 26 states from different corners of India.
Our goal:
To improve and extend the youth work and services through Youth Organizations;
To enhance and demonstrate youth work in the society;
To promote effective youth programmme;
To organize network of civil society organizations working towards the development of youth work;
To organize seminars, conferences, workshops, trainings;
To maintain international relation with organizations promoting young people in their programme and activities
Affiliation:
Consultative (Roster) Status with ECOSOC, United Nations;
Consultative Status with Commission on Sustainable Development;
Full Member of World Assembly of Youth (WAY); Asian Youth Council (AYC);
Member of CRIN;
Member of South Asia Youth Environment Network (SAYEN);
Affiliate with ECPAT International, Thailand;
Member of ATSECE-DELHI;
Indian Partner of AIDS Care Watch Campaign;
Working relation with Indian Association of Parliamentarians (IAPPD);
Working relation with International Medical Parliamentarians Organizations (IMPO);
Working relation with Asian Forum of Parliamentarians on Population and Development (AFPPD).
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