EDUCATION & SKILLING

CYDA provides a roof where guidance and psychosocial support is provided to adolescents in age group of 10 to 19 years to channelize the constructive use of potentials without which they can stary in an incorrect path. Organization strongly supports adolescents to recognize their rights and raise their voice, their concern, undermined by existing social and cultural norms. Though changes are taking place with the wave of digital technology, the importance of engaging with adolescents can hardly be emphasized. Only through creation of a supportive social network and providing adolescents a space for communication and participation, rights of adolescents can be protected.

Adolescent Unit creates an environment in schools and communities, where adolescents enjoy their right to education, health, participation and expression. The various initiatives and activities with adolescent girls and boys towards fostering their holistic development through remedial education, life skills education, counselling, games4change, digital literacy and awareness on sexual and reproductive health and gender.

Community Resource Centre

CYDA established CRCs for the adolescents who belong to vulnerable urban families of Tadiwala, Salve Nagar, Viman Nagar & Vishrantwadi locations. This aims to enhance their holistic development through remedial coaching, life skills education (TARANG – Talking to Adolescents on Reproductive Health and Gender), digital literacy, spoken English, career guidance, support classes, career counselling, music, STEM activities and promoting their journey towards responsible citizenship. Covid – 19 pandemic created a disruption in the education of students and adolescents from urban poor communities with a huge digital divide, physical closure of schools and care givers and parents struggling to meet basic survival needs of the family. Total 235 students across 5 CRC’s have been enrolled, of which 169 of 8^th, 10^th & 12^th standards visit the centres after their school working hours. Career guidance was provided to 100 students, 99 of them are attending spoken English classes regularly, while 176 underwent different soft skills training. 33 students took initiative and are identified as community leaders. In addition, 50 students developed various science models. Improved knowledge among 184 students about gender, sexual health & hygiene and counselling for 87 students. 42 youth are mentors.

Bridging the Learning Gap

The teaching learning process during COVID-19 was tied into virtual mode. Due to the restricted abilities of students to work independently behind a screen, primary school education is barely adaptable to virtual settings. Children had limited access to learning materials other than textbooks, when schools were closed down. Dealing with this, inflow of students has been a huge challenge for government schools and teachers, especially after a period of long school closures and children returning to school with significant learning deficits.

Considering all of these issues, CYDA has started implementing the project – “Bridging the Learning Gap” for 10000 students of 1^st & 2^nd grades of 198 Zilla Parishad schools, Indapur. 327 school teachers have supported this initiative. Project aimed at bridging the learning gaps created by the pandemic and focusing on the basic academic skills of children, especially for the languages – Marathi & English and subject Mathematics.

STEM Education

STEM Champions in the Making…

The rapid increase in interconnectivity and smart automation has accelerated the changes in technology, industries and processes. These changes have led us to what is now termed as the Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0 that embraces the computerization in smart factories. This requires improved capacities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematical (STEM) fields. It is predicted that 80% of the jobs created in the Industry, 4.0 will require some form of mathematics and science skills, labelled as 21st-century skills or STEM skills.

Many girls and women are held back by biases, social norms and expectations influencing the quality of the education they receive and the subjects they study. Recent data reports that despite 43% of Indian women graduating from STEM fields, only 14% actually take up jobs in these fields.

With the goal of making STEM education more accessible for students of the underserved community, especially girls, CYDA has been working with schools and communities to provide an exciting hands-on/exploratory learning experience to the students and at the same time help to improve their analytical and problem-solving skills.

CYDA’s STEM program motivates and encourages students to choose science, technology, engineering and mathematics as fields of study. It supports the development of skills including creativity, critical analysis, teamwork, independent thinking, initiative communication, digital literacy and problem-solving. The program also works with teachers to convert traditional teaching method into fun, innovative and interactive learning method. CYDA has trained almost 2000 adolescents on STEM

Skill Centres

CYDA is promoting 4 skill centres in Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh to promote skill program for drop outs as well as people who require specialized skilling in plumbing, electrical, solar repairing, automobile repairing, petrol pump operators. So far, we have trained more than 1000 youth as well as girls.