Blending Spectrum is a project of The YP Foundation that connects urban young people through a peer-to peer community interaction with street and slum children, with the aim of increasing sensitivity between street and slum children and the urban youth. Blending Spectrum provides healthcare and non-formal education (including Life Skills Based Education), building the potential of children with limited access to opportunities.

The Blending Spectrum Management Team, or the BSMT, is the core group of 5 young staff members who execute and develop the project’s goals on 2 locations in Delhi. The project was founded by 17-year-old Manka Bajaj in 2006 and has also been run by Rohanjit Chaudhry since. Aditi Kaul, a 3rd year student at Delhi University, currently heads the BSMT.

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I joined The YP Foundation two years ago, in my second year of college. A couple of my friends attended the induction and I was pretty much coerced into attending the next one. I was even given strict instructions to “Pick VOICES, The School Project as your first option. Don’t pick anything else and don’t mess up”.

I’m glad I listened. I’ve always loved psychology and whilst I was studying philosophy in college, VOICES kept me connected to various things psychological. We dealt with what we call the ‘whys’ of the issues we work with – ‘Why do people bully? Why do people take drugs? Why do people feel so insecure about the way they look?’

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Working at The YP Foundation (TYPF) is like being on a ship! At Project 19 at TYPF, where I work, today is the day where you’re sitting and relaxing, looking around seeing what is missing and what can be improved. Trying to add to the workshop formats, making lists, meeting professionals and writing blogs! You can almost be assured though, that it’s not going to stay like this for long though.

The past few weeks have been crazy. We finished conducting training evaluations with our peer education team by the 1st week of February after training with them for the last 4 months on young people’s sexuality, health and rights, then moved into conducting public workshops.

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Approximately 3 million young people graduate from high schools across the country each year. Whilst even secondary education may be considered a privilege for several young people, the future prospects are often still not as bright as they should and could be. As per information provided by The Family India Foundation, only 20–30% of these graduates are what they classify as employable. The remaining portion, often from socio-economically weaker sections of society are unemployed due to inaccessibility to resources that would enable them to acquire skills like spoken English, basic use of computers, presentation and communication skills, essential for them to retain gainful employment.

The Ranjan Project is a personality development and skill building program aimed at helping some of these less privileged youth adopt skills that can help them become ‘employable.’ Besides the 4–month program, the project also provides assistance to these students to prepare professional personal resumes, as well as find jobs suitable to their qualifications and abilities. Each of the students attending the program are a major part of their families hope for increased income, and therefore the support provided by the project enables the upward mobility of their whole family. Sumeet for example, is one of a family of five. His father is a driver, and earns a salary of Rs. 6000/- but attending the course has aided him in getting a job that has resulted in the doubling of his family’s income.

Besides lessons in the classroom setting, sessions include field trips to areas of work such as BPOs, as well as various games and exercises intended to help foster skills required to work in a team and that is where VOICES comes in. VOICES, the School Project of The YP Foundation is a peer education project that aims at developing stronger life skills and informed decision making in school going adolescents by providing a safe, non-judgmental space for them to express and formulate their attitudes on issues relevant to them. Bringing these two fairly diverse areas of work together, led to an extremely interesting collaboration between The YP Foundation and The Ranjan Project this month.

Diversifying from the target audience the project has worked with in the past, the VOICES team is conducting a 4-part module with the 28 students enrolled at ‘Vidya Ankur Social Centre’ in Badarpur. The modules consist entirely of interactive and exciting exercises that enable the students to explore the various elements of communication such as the choice of words, body language, tone, etc. Besides identifying these components, the modules also enable the students to develop an understanding of what effective communication entails, as well as create a space for them to apply this understanding.

Despite the nervous jitters and this being a previously entirely unexplored area of work, the response from the students at the centre has been enthusiastic and heartening, at the very least. The students are eager to learn from external facilitators, as well as each other, and make the most of every opportunity. Their learning and receptiveness to the information is clearly reflected in their feedback, as well as their ability to apply it whilst participating in consequent activities. As Sunita, a student at the centre said at the end of the first session, “Today we learnt what is communication and what is the right way to communicate so that other people understand our thoughts.”

On the whole, we are extremely happy with the way this partnership has panned out, and are looking forward to a more long-term collaboration in the coming year.

Charvi Singh
Project Trainer
VOICES – The School Project