Youth Resource Cells

YRCs are envisioned as hubs for community development - enabling young people to achieve their potential and bring about positive social change. The YRC Project sees young people as partners in the process of social change rather than beneficiaries. The process hopes to build ownership, responsibility and sustainability.

Download
YRC Impact Assessment Report 2011 (pdf 4 MB)

In this page

The main components of the YRC Project are:

Youth Fellowship, Residential Camps, Community Based Trainings, Action Projects and Youth Resources

The YRC curriculum is organised around four broad themes: Self-to-Society, The Environment, Health, and Human Rights

Meet the YRCs (2007-09)

Click on the links below to download pdf presentations.

YRC Ujaan (1.5 MB) | YRC Manoranjan Ray Pally Sporting Club (1.3 MB) | YRC Gabberia Science Research Institute (1 MB) | YRC Yuva (980 KB)

Project Partners

Youth Resource Cells Project is a TF Initiative in collaboration with Pravah Streaming Initiative and with support from SRTT Fund for supporting youth focussed action

Youth Fellowship

This is a year long programme to develop peer leaders, and forms the core of the YRC project. Urban and Rural young people in the age group of 16-25 years are eligible. Over the year, Fellows are helped to build or strengthen YRC groups in their respective neighbourhoods.

Fellows explore and connect with themselves and their neighbourhoods. They explore issues that include the environment, water sanitation hygiene, adolescent reproductive health (ARH), HIV/AIDS, human rights and gender.

They learn skills such as teamwork, facilitation, community survey techniques, peer counseling, public awareness and advocacy techniques, project planning and implementation.

All this happens over weekly day-long sessions at TF; through participatory workshops, research activities, film screenings and discussions.

While most sessions are conducted by Youth Trainers, special workshops are also conducted by visiting faculty. Fellows also regularly share their learnings with their peer groups at the community. Interested Fellows can graduate to become Youth Trainers.

Download Fellowship process photo-documentation

YRC_FLS09.pdf (4.4 MB)

Residential Camps

These are typically 3 to 4 day residential camps conducted by Youth Trainers or Fellows for other YRC group members. These camps are organised roughly once a quarter, and each one deals with one of the four main themes of the YRC curriculum.

Self-to-Society

This camp helps young people build self confidence, identify their strengths and the value of teamwork. It explores the need for change and helps young people understand the difference between a charity approach and a rights based approach to bringing about change in society. It introduces young people to facilitation skills, and planning for action projects.

The Environment

This camp deals with climate change, and water, sanitation & hygiene. Young people explore knowledge, attitudes, behaviours, and practices of their own, as well as those of the members in their community.

The Blue Planet Game, and the Watsan kit are used explore climate change and water-sanitation-hygiene issues respectively.

Health

This camp focusses on ARH, and helps young people deal with their own physical and emotional changes. It is a platform to discuss taboo issues, and ways for young people to make informed choices in their own lives, as well as share correct information with their peers. These issues are discussed using the Champa, Shankar and IMLHIV kits.

The camp also helps young people get a first hand feel of community attitudes by helping them conduct and analyse a community survey. On the last day, young people plan and implement an action project on HIV/AIDS.

Human Rights

This camp begins by helping young people explore their multiple identities. It also helps young people understand how some of our attitudes are shaped through stereotypes. Concepts related to marginalisation and discrimination are discussed. Young people also explore human rights and learn to recognise violations. Some Human Rights and Gender issues are discussed using the Changemakers tools. So far, the ongoing We Can Campaign has been the action project for this theme.

Community Based Trainings

These are training sessions for YRC members who are unable to attend residential camps away from home. They are conducted by Fellows, with assistance from YRC members who have attended the relevant theme camps.

Community Based Trainings often take the form of participatory workshops or film screenings accompanied by discussions. These sessions are monitored by Youth Trainers.

Action Projects

YRCs are assisted to plan and implement simple thematic action projects in their neighbourhood once every quarter.

Action Projects strengthen YRCs by helping members connect with the community, gain confidence, have fun “doing social stuff”, sharpen their understanding of things learnt, innovate and test new patterns of social engagement.

Youth Resources

The YRC curriculum is encapsulated in a set of learning resources. Through the two year cycle, these resources are handed over to each of the YRCs for future use at the community.

YRC resources include issue-based communication kits developed by TF. A number of YRC specific resources have been developed, and several are in the process of development. These include Booklets, Workbooks, Training Manuals and Materials including games and models.

Apart from tools developed by TF, YRCs have access to TFs library of resources such as Short Films and Inspirational Music that are specially packaged for use in YRCs.

Also See Champa Shankar Kits | IML HIV Kit | Watsan Kit | Changemakers Tools