Training on Leadership and Youth Empowerment.

Between 16-18^th December, our Program Officer Shruti Priya facilitated a three-day training program for youth and adolescents at Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra, Japla (Jharkhand) in collaboration with Pro-Sport Development, a sport based social enterprise that uses sports as a medium to bring change. The training program which focused on Leadership and Youth Empowerment through engaging sport-based activities was attended by 27 girls and 14 boys in three batches. The participants were high school and college students aged 15-23 belonging to rural background.

The training divided into three sessions aimed to:

1. Generate self-awareness and confidence by encouraging participants to reflect on their strengths and weaknesses, fostering a deeper understanding of themselves.
2. Through discussions and reflections build confidence and recognize and hone their innate leadership qualities.
3. Challenge them to leverage their newfound skills to identify and address issues within their community through the activity “Community Mapping” and inspire change.

The first session on self-awareness and self-esteem building prompted participants to mention their likes and dislikes about themselves. Participants found it rather difficult to mention things that they like about themselves. It was highlighted that we all have strengths and weaknesses that we are unable to identify because we do not spend a lot of time introspecting, examining our abilities and emotions. It was emphasized that while it is easier to criticize ourselves, we often undermine what our strengths are. While one should work on their shortcoming, they should also from time to time appreciate themselves for their achievements however small they be as it builds confidence. As the activity brought out the participant’s feeling about their physical and innate attributes as some of them mentioned liking the length of their hair, or the colour of their eyes or their helpful nature and not liking the colour of their skin or their rude behaviour discussion on self-acceptance and accepting our physical attributes which cannot be altered took place. It was brought to light that everyone is unique, what we find strange about ourselves is what makes us apart from other so instead of spending time disliking what we think are our “imperfections” we should focus on changing our behaviour and habits that we consider need changing.

After participants had developed self-awareness, acknowledged their strengths, weakness, likes and dislikes about themselves, the next session on Leadership sought to empower them by helping them develop and identify leadership skills within themselves. After a brief discussion on Who a Leader is? and qualities of an effective leader, participants spent time reflecting on their personnel experiences of demonstrating leadership skills. They shared taking decisions that impacted the lives of their family members, providing advice that worked in favour of someone, resolving conflicts, making efforts to get the community water pump and lights repaired and many more.

The activity helped them realize that all of them at some point in their lives took an action, an initiative or made an impact that demonstrated their leadership skills. After recognizing their innate leadership skills, in the final activity “Community Mapping” aimed at helping them utilize their new identified leadership skills to advance changes in the community, they had to first identify challenges in their community and then propose tangible solutions to problems and issues that they identified.  pollution, bad road, absence of playing ground, panchayat ghar (village panchayat building) and streetlights, unkept water tanks among many others were recognized as problems and solution proposed and suggested by facilitator were keeping those responsible accountable, signing petitions, spreading awareness, complaints.

The training program provided many new learning to the participants and pushed them out of their comfort zones. The reflective and sport-based exercises kept them engaged. Participants built self-esteem, explored their identities, identified leadership qualities, and developed a tangible action plan to positively impact their community. The workshop not only equipped the participants with leadership skills but also instilled a sense of responsibility towards their community. We look forward to witnessing the wonderful changes these young leaders in training will bring to Japla.