Industry helping young to help themselves

N R Foundation of N R Group, a leading agarbatti manufacturing concern of Mysore, is engaged in a programme to help the young develop life skills.

Its trained resource persons are engaged in life skill education for students in the age group of 13-19 years, teachers, school managements and parents. The World Health Organisation (WHO) developed the core programme after identifying life skills for promoting the health and well-being of adolescents and youth.

Communication skills, managing emotion and stress, problem solving, decision making, listening skills, learning to say, self-confidence building, positive thinking, academic achievement and career, and issues relating to friendship with opposite sex form part of the programme.

Underscoring the importance of the programme, industrialist R N Murthy of the foundation says, "Apart from professional skills, life skills have become important in the changing social scenario, family structure, urbanisation, competition and working parents. Social and emotional support for young individuals is decreasing."

"The inability to handle frustration arising out of demanding situations is resulting in undesirable outcomes like substance abuse, crime, suicides, attrition from school and poor academic achievement. In this context, life skills' education can be very useful and effective means to equip the young to face the challenges in their later life."

"India has well defined and time-tested financial, judicial and democratic structure important to the nation's growth. It is the bounden duty of the people to ensure the growth is maintained. This is possible only when the country's youth are given proper direction," Murthy says.

Realising this, the N R Foundation had nine persons, including six from the foundation, trained at the Child Development Centre in Thiruvananthapuram. They are now engaged in training teachers in imparting life skills for their students.