Youth and Inclusive Citizenship

Including who?Scheduled Cast - 16.6%Scheduled Tribe - 8.6%Muslims - 13 %

a major percentage of these are youth and would be youth

3 Key Issues for Inclusive Citizenship1 -Lack of Equity Perspective in general - Majoritarinism has been on rise pushing out any dialogues on religious exclusion, ethnicity and cast structure. Even in INGO staff and CBO's there are individuals who talk about "including everyone" and they get uncomfotable if specific disadvantage of marginalized are raised and use example of a miniscule percentage of marginalized who have benifitted to divert the attention.

2 - Multiple form of discrimination - Where are the youth to include. The magnitude of multiple form of discrimination begning from primary education and the ways in which post-metric scholarships are handled ensures that somehow by the time a marginalized child becomes a youth, he/she has dropped out, forced into low paying, unorganized sector jobs.

3 -Willful exclusion of stories of Marginalzed group/ role models from all conversations - for those who are able to arrive at their youth, the system/society works to make them feel guilty/ incomplete/ have low self-concept. The stories of people from Marginalzed communities is limited, outdated and distant and hence do not serve as anchor for young people who are cornered every day for their identity.

SC/ST attrocity act - does not help as no effort to educate the marginalized groups about their right, and because of lack of adequate representation of marginlized approaching authority is not an obvious solution

Reservation - has helped many to change their life. There is no effort in institute to include the marginalized. They face bias/ abuse / discrimination by peers and by teaching/non teaching staff.Scholarship as alms, being offered as donations and not as a right

Current Youth Policy and how it negates that specific attention is needed for these youth. How there are no specific schemes for bringing youth into the centre of devt – except NYK, or NSS – Issues of poor implementation

Growing privatisation and no space for youth from these groups

Challenges of Inclusive Citizenship

To help children grow with positive self concept when they are youngInclusive Education to help children step into their youth with a positive self conceptKhel Se Mel to offer experiences of inclusion to build confidence/overcome past trauma and see for themselves they are at parIntroducing Social Justice Minister in Bal Sansad who are from Marginalized groupsHelping children understand childright and also do advocacy by learning to make storie on their experiences of discrimination and present puppet shows to communicate it in a less thretning way

CSEI & Play for Peace work with young people

With adoloscent and youth

Formation of Ambedkar Student Forum - A collective of young people from SC community who are persuing educationTo build a culture of education in their communityTo have a space where they can share and voice their feelingsTo have access to information that helps them access opportunity

Vyaktitv Vikas Kendra (Personality Development Centre) in BiharTo offer an alternative to tuition center and go beyond just tuition to offer life skills education. Access to hands on computer usageCreating opportunities to take initiative and leadrship using problem-solving activities, peer education and exposure visit

Youth Tech Hub in Delhi - To offer a space for marginalized youth in urban slums to connect and build their self-concept and life-skills. Teh space will also provide access to information and opportunities

Efforts to connect to CSR and NSDM - The new mandate for businesses to have CSR offers potential. We are in process to bring equity perspective to CSR's. We aim to help CLO's develop capacity to be CSR and NSDM capable

Experiential Learning - Play for Peace and CSEI are developing modules to make the work with young people participatory. 5 Youth who have are trained facilitator form Marginalzed community have been selected as changeloomers. We see developing youth from marginalised community as "Life-Skills facilitator" having a long term impact.Helping Community Lead Organizations (CLO's ) to grow CLO is a commnuity based organization lead by someone from the community. It is our clear understanding and conviction that the growth of leadership and initiative from within teh marginalized community if we want to sustain any change. Formation of an Social Equity Working Group of CLO's that has taken on treking post matric scholarship as an area of study to get case studies/ stories of discrimination/ nonimplementation of what constitution gurantees.

•Access to information •Opportunities to voice their grievances at policy level•Opprotunity to access experiential learning pedagogy in contrast to traditional system that is inherently oppresive and status-quoist •Space to come together, share and learn, cooperate, collaborate, mentor etc•Platforms to build upon collective strength•Gender and girls issues in particular – youth with disability

Enablers for Inclusion

With guidence and mentoring youth are becomeing change agents of their commnunity. By creating ground level collectives where they get support they can create a culture of learning in their community.

In a learning center in Gosai Mat(Dhanarua block, Patna )where 3 15-16 year (most educated youth in community) run a learning center also started teaching their mother.

In a learning center for children in Rohini(Delhi) few mothers came and started learning as they found the space non-thretening

Youth need partnership and mentoring so they take ownership. Youth are capable of taking chanrge as long as the model of working with them is based on "Power with" and not "Power Over"

What and How Youth will take charge and create "culture of learning" in their communities.