By Vibhuti Vasudev
Youth for Sustainability Dialogues is a platform for Youth leaders across the world to exchange their thoughts, examine challenges in their local environment with the Sustainable Development Goals ‘SDGs’ as a common thread. The youth are given an opportunity to showcase their projects and initiatives and come together as a youth movement that is truly ‘Glocal’ towards the achievement of SDGs as defined by the UN. The past session focused on displaying youth’s talent and creativity towards solving local community challenges on the theme of UNSDGs, thus expressing a story of sustainable change through photography.
The COVID pandemic and the ensuing lockdown restricted movement while also halting education and learning across the world. With no physical classes and the increasing uncertainty, the foundation stone of a country’s development, i.e., education, became brittle. The education system, thus, strived to find an alternative, struggling to develop a new digitally- driven learning system. The pandemic brought to light new reforms in pedagogy to make learning more holistic, accessible, and enjoyable.
Y4SD organized the SDG on Digital Education: Resilience in Times of Crisis on 29th January, 2021. The session threw light on the methods to reinvent education to suit the post COVID-world, while also discussing ways to use digital tools to empower teachers as well as students.
The expert for the session was Ms. Ishita Dutta, Personal Leadership Coach and Trainer, Educator and Executive Coach- Teach For India (TFIx). The session was moderated by Vrinda. The Guests of Honor were the members of Gyandeep Growth Foundation: Sumita Kakkar, Foundation Chairman at Gyandeep; and Sunila Sachdeva and Anjali Naik, Director- Gyandeep. The two teams for the session were Sakshi Singh and Shrishti Duggal, who talked about their Project Kilkari Pathshala under CDF Gargi Chapter, India; and Marius Dumitru, who talked about Schools of Peace under MasterPeace Romania.
Marius talked about his project, Schools of Peace, implemented by Master Peace Romania Association in 2016, which is a grass-root project that has involved more than 50 volunteers, 20 teachers and 500 beneficiaries across Prahova county in Romania. The main objectives revolve around teaching nonviolent non-formal methods of coping with reality and teaching about how to respect human rights. The project focuses on imparting Peace education so as to cultivate talented individuals with the values of peace. It does not limit itself to just cognitive learning, but also uses emotional and practical approaches towards learning, and differs from any other peace –building instrument. Marius also discussed about various interesting classroom and online activities conducted by the project.
Sakshi and Shrishti introduced their Project Kilkari under CDF-Gargi Chapter, which has a team of 60+ volunteers working at three different Kilkari Pathshalas at Green Park, Kalkaji & Jor Bagh, New Delhi, before the pandemic. Though the pandemic came as a hindrance, they devised a solution to ensure that Project Kilkari continues to illuminate lives of its user group. The project has been successful in teaching 50+ students regularly by their team through online means. For the coming season, the project would continue to impact a greater number of lives by expanding its reach. The focal point would also be towards involving the students in co-curricular activities along with academics.
This was followed by collaborators of Gyandeep sharing their views on both the teams’ impactful projects. The expert, Ishita Dutta, then talked about Teach for India, a wonderful organisation focused on creating entrepreneurs for education. She asked various questions from both the teams related to their projects, which were answered quite remarkably. The moderator, Vrinda, too posed pressing questions.
The session concluded with a vote of thanks by the moderator.
Know more about Gyandeep Growth Foundation: https://www.gyandeepgrowthfoundation.com/
Get in touch with MasterPeace Romania:
https://www.facebook.com/MasterPeaceRomania
https://www.instagram.com/masterpeaceromania/
Get in touch with Connecting Dreams Foundation Gargi College Chapter:
https://www.facebook.com/cdfgargichapter
https://www.instagram.com/cdf_gargi/
