Hello,
I am Vaishali Sharma, currently working as a Gandhi Fellow in collaboration with four fellows in Bicchiwara Block, Dungarpur, Rajasthan. We are working with the leadership of 30 Panchayat Education officers (Adarsh School principals) for the overall development of school and to increase Student Learning Outcome (SLO).  
You can find more details about this Fellowship at:
http://gandhifellowship.org/

I've been visiting the communities of my schools and right now I am undertaking community immersion for a month by staying with a family to understand the lifestyle and problems by living at the ground level with them. The place is one of the interior locations called Modar, a village in Dungarpur, Rajasthan. Till now, I have found that the youth of the communities are educated but not skilled. Nevertheless, they can create massive impact on the school and the community if appropriate skill development trainings are provided to them. Also in the government schools the challenges that teachers faced is mainly the inadequate availablity of faculty members in the primary department. Moreover, they are involved in other tasks related to daak (paper work) which makes them unnecessarily preoccupied. Observing this situation, I got an idea to utilise the skills of youths of this region.
The focus of the state is on creating smart cities but it’s indispensable to have smart villages also. With this mission in mind, to enhance the life skills of youth in rural parts of India, I am piloting a project that attempts to work on this issue. It has been named Diya, an initiative for tribal youth development which I would like to expand if it currently works in an effective way to provide the benefits amongst the tribal youth. The purpose behind wanting to connect with you is the determination to impact the entire community of the designated region.
Brief plan to enhance the system and design for youth development project after the availability of funds- 
WEEK 1
Objective: Making youth group functional
•Identifying youth group who can help in taking ownership for development of their villages. Select 30 youth from all community.
•Identification of 1 village where these selected individuals will together work towards changing community
•Planning for Youths Life Skills workshop with the profit organisation for training.
Week 2
Objective: Execution of 15 days Life skills workshop training for youth. Training will be in three phases in one year each for 15 days.
•Capacity building of Youths on various life skills used in their day to day life (Problem solving, Decision making, Critical Thinking, Empathy, Self Awareness)
•Session on how problems are identified and solutions are devised.
•Learning Sessions for youth
(Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Education, Management, Community Leadership)
 Week 3
Objective: Implementation of 4 different projects with the help of youth in the selected village. Projects are as follows-
•Village profiling
•Agenda Based Meeting (these meetings will be held by youth in order to connect parents with schools such as formation of MTA/PTA)
•Funshala (Activity school run by community youths)
• Community fair (exhibition organized by youths)
(The projects will enable them to understand the ground reality and how things are being currently implemented and further build up confidence to work on their dreams)
Firstly, those 30 youths will be working in one community and that community work shall be replicated in their respective communities.
Impact as outcome-
• Cause a change in mindset- Being a local person of the community, youths very well understand their community and their efforts will definitely bring other people of the community together to be part of change. Aim of this project is to bring community members and school together.
• Skills should be developed- Planning and making strategy, Collaboration, Self-awareness, Facilitation in fellows. Increase in confidence, Discovery of self, mobilizing resources from community in youths.
• Use collaborative efforts- Altogether 30 youths will work together in different projects to bring parents and school together. We will together plan for the workshop and will invite different persons from different background to be part of workshops. Principal will take ownership of working with youths.
• Have evidences for future regularity-  Youths who’d participate in these workshops will be our youth in charge for other communities and they will run same projects with other youths in their respective communities. This way, we will be able to assure youth participation in other communities as well.
• Change in Student learning outcome can be measured-  Through youth intervention there will be awareness in parents. Through Funshala, children will be engaged in after school learning, children will be able to participate in different activities in community fair.
Beneficiaries of your donations-
The stakeholders involved in this youth development project which majorly include youth themselves.
External profit organisation for the training purposes.
 The required funds will be needed in the month of February and will be deployed in the sub projects within the development project.
The total approximate expenditure- 

₹ 33000
Training hall - ₹ 8000

Equipments- 5000
Food - 10,000
Travelling-  3000
Certificates - ₹ 2000
Stationary - ₹ 5000

Even your smallest support emancipated with love and support will help us in shaping the overall community through this heart-warming venture. Every penny you contribute will help a youth to dream and transform their dreams into impactful actions through discovering self by engaging on the ground level. You are just a click away from helping a tribal youth community enjoy a better life. Looking forward to collaborate with your generous hand for the well-being of our youth.

My Journey so far in Gandhi Fellowship
I have been in the Fellowship for 5 months now and till now, I have worked primarily on library, classroom immersion and teaching delivery practices. After rigorous planning and strategizing, my team and I, have been able to set up libraries in all the 30 schools.
We have created an engaging momentum by involving the stakeholders and organised a campaign called ‘Learning Festival’. We planned to encourage the constructive habit of reading and writing among children and to provoke the realisation about its importance in the mission of nation building. We believe that every child is bestowed with his/her unique imagination which can be expressed into words, text or images if given an opportunity. We decided to organise sessions of story-telling, story-writing, and drawing or doodling in order to give an effective outlet to their thought process and creativity. These efforts were presented to the community through a student rally.


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