UNICEF and YuWaah (Generation Unlimited in India) has marked World Youth Skills Day with the launch of the #YoungWarriorNXT (YW NXT) report in partnership with Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Udhyam Learning Foundation. The #YoungWarriorNXT report – ‘Life Skills Delivery for Young People – Scalable Solutions for India’ captures the programme implementation methodology, data-led findings and recommendations for scale.
The report recommends some key aspects to scale life skills, highlighting the need to integrate life skills into the school curriculum, and therefore, garner support from SCERTs and state resource groups to identify and codify important life skills in each state. Other findings include investing in the capacity building of teachers, including training on appropriate pedagogical practices and building teacher-aids like codified classroom scripts, assessment tools and teacher-mentor programs.
The report further suggests to involve parents, family members and community leaders in establishing value proposition, creating accountability, and delivering content to influence on enrolment, engagement, and impact positively. Along with recommendations to build a common vocabulary for life skills to help converge efforts, create an accessible repository of life skills content, mapped to state-specific adoption frameworks and proficiency levels using standard definitions, develop and adopt standardised life skills assessment tools, contextualised and relevant to India.
“For a country like India, with a large youth population, it is important that a holistic approach to education is adopted. Life skill development is a critical component of that approach, training for which should start early on in life. The Young Warrior NXT report brings together much-needed data and evidence on approaches that can be deployed at scale to empower young people and help in the effective delivery of life skills education,” Yasumasa Kimura, UNICEF India Representative said.
“Young people, if provided with proper skills and training, can excel in unprecedented ways. To address and understand the reasons behind the skill gap and economic opportunities, we have joined hands with partners to bring forward the #YWNXT report, which not only attempts to find ways across levels of facilitations and access to technology, but also pivots its way towards finding impactful and scalable solutions for life skill delivery,” Abhishek Gupta, Chief Operating Officer, YuWaah said,
Furthermore, YuWaah, UNICEF, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Udhyam Learning Foundation came together in July 2021 to respond to the imperative need to build the life skills of young people in India and initiated the Young Warrior NXT (#YWNXT) programme.
At its core, YW NXT aims to equip five lakh adolescents with the relevant life skills to make them employable and future-ready, by galvanising partnerships with diverse stakeholders and leveraging existing content, technology and human resources in the ecosystem.
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