You Remembered My Name?

I’ve been talking to young people from hard-scrabble backgrounds, mostly first-time students, in urban, poor India as part of a mentoring program facilitated by Freedom Employability Academy, a not-for-profit based in Delhi (https://feaindia.org/about/nbsp;). FEA is currently in the northern Hindi belt of Delhi, UP, Madhya Pradesh. They also have started running rural programs in Hindi.Every Saturday at 5:30 or 6:30 a.m. (depending on US Eastern Standard time), which is 4 p.m. Indian Standard Time, I Zoom in on a classroom with a group of 15-16 students and a facilitator. The sessions are 90-minutes each, in English, and we can always go for longer if we could. The batches of students, about 20 are usually registered and 15-16 are the average attending for 5 sessions. The goal of the sessions is to help students “better understand what professional paths are available to them, which of those might be appropriate to them, and what they need to get there.” (From FEAnbsp;https://feaindia.org/mentor/).The FEA provides a basic script for the mentors and topics for each session. Intro, Choosing your Career, Preparing for your Career, Dealing with Adversity, Reviewing your Career Plan. I’ve been doing this almost every month since 2021.The Reality· The average FEA student is between 18-23. There are approximately 148.5K such students in India.· The average FEA student is either in 12th grade or in college. There are 42K colleges in India and 740 universities. Numbers are not the whole story. The US has 2.8K colleges and a total of 5,300 colleges and universities for a population a quarter of India’s.· Most of the education that the average FEA students are getting is haphazard at best and subpar. Remedial courses are not offered and the lack of early grounding in not only subject-area knowledge but also in how to learn; how to ask questions; how to research; how to cope with demands of family, home and aspirations is a major challenge. What I Focus On· My primary goals are to get the students to voice their opinions, ask questions that matter to them about careers and their obstacles, difficulties, have them share a bit of their fun and joys in life.· I DO NOT (caps intentional) teach them any subject or lecture them on how to behave.· I DO talk to them and have guest speakers focus on how to talk to interviewers; how to manage stress; how to improve speaking English, writing English, how to study without losing focus, how to think about alternative strategies about aspirations and professional desires. Examples of What Students Were Most Interested in Learning Recently· How can I focus on studying more?· I have ideas about expanding my family business, but my father is not interested.· I have to raise my tuition fees because my family can’t afford it. I sew jewelry stones on clothes and resell them to raise money. How can I expand? ( Majority of the students I get are young women)· I want to become an IPS officer, but my family is against that (student is a young woman)· Q: What do you plan to do? A: Software engineer. Q: Are you learning any coding? A: No. Q: Why do you want to become a software engineer? A: My cousin is one.S o, if I was able to convey anything this past month, it was summarized as such:Q1. What is the most important lesson students got out of the mentorship experience?They all understood the importance of having a plan B. They also understood that they should choose a career of their choice not what is told by others. They should choose a career which makes them happy.Q.2- Are the students thinking more about a wider range of career options and opportunities? Yes. The students have started thinking about a wider range of career options. They got some ways of following their passion too like some of them can start online business etc. The mentor also shared a link of MOOC courses which students can use to learn anything.Q3. What attributes of the mentor motivated and brought about positive changes for the students? The students appreciated the politeness of the mentor and his positivity towards life. The students enjoyed listening to mentors experience. Students really enjoyed his company as they found the mentor an active listener. He listened to everyone patiently and provided solutions to each student.Q4. Names of the students who wish to remain connected with the mentor via email or WhatsApp to continue the conversation: Most of them want to be connected with the mentor for future help. They all have email ID of the mentor. Join me as a guest speaker/collaborator. It’s 90 minutes only in a month or so. If you’re Indian, you’ll understand the need for this as the elites and privileged alone cannot drive social and economic change. It must come from the vast middle and lower. I don’t pretend that this is a revolutionary thought. It’s better to try something than do nothing. OPEN TO DMs or emails: [email protected]