Project ‘CAPTAIN’: Life Skill Education and Orientation on type of vocational trades for Adolescents

There are 253 million adolescents in India age group 10-19 years. This age group comprises of individuals in a transient phase of life requiring nutrition, education, counselling and guidance to ensure their development into healthy adults. Violence during adolescence also increases the risks of injury, HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, mental health problems, poor school performance and dropout, early pregnancy, reproductive health problems, and communicable and non-communicable diseases are increasing in adolescents. Nearly 18 lakh adults and 4.6 lakh children fall in the badly addicted category. Inhalants (overall prevalence of 0.7%) are the only category of substances for which the prevalence of current use among children and adolescents is higher (1.17%) than adults (0.58%) according to the AIIMS report 2019. ARSH (Adolescents and reproductive sexual health) program has been implemented by the government at the district level with 2 centres for the district, Rural and urban which is not sufficient. At the community level, there are no interventions have been going on in life skill education and orientation on vocational trades. That’s why there is a need of working with adolescents at the community level to make the individual able to improve his/her knowledge and develop values and views.

• SDG-4 ‘Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all has motivated to work for adolescents to improve their quality of life.
• Life skill education (LSE) for 10 to 18 years adolescents: Will form the groups of 10- 14 and 15-18 at community level and will conduct the 12 sessions of ‘LSE’ e.g. anger control, critical thinking, and decision making for each group through master trainer. 40 groups will form at 10 sites.
• Orientation of type vocational trades and up scaling home based skills: Will conduct the orientation of type of vocational trades for 14-18 years old adolescents to prepare them for future careers by gaining the necessary skills and experience. Home based skill e.g. helping for cooking, vacuuming through interactive sessions.
• Formation of ‘Adolescents friendly committee’: will form the stakeholders committee e.g. representative of Youth, Self-help group, doctor, police, teacher, NGO to support ‘ADC.
• Formation of ‘Adolescents Driven Centre’ (ADC): Will form the centres at community level which will be drive by adolescents only, the leader will call a “CAPTAIN”.
• Formation of ‘Federation of ‘Adolescents Driven Centre’: In the project period, adolescents will be empowered to form the federation which will support ADC to sustain the activity.

• Increase awareness among adolescents about the determinants of adolescents health such as sexual reproductive health, mental health, injuries and violence and substance misuse
• Increase awareness on life skills building, leadership skills, about various types of vocational trades.
• Increase awareness among parents and stakeholders on adolescents' needs