Igniting minds of 2888 students!!
Igniting Young Minds
A Day with Junior Achievement's Careers
with Purpose Programme
Ooty & Kothagiri
| 10 July 2010
2,888 students and 60 teachers • 55
parallel sessions • 100+ volunteers •
Two locations — Ooty & Kothagiri
• One single day
These are some of the striking figures from the recently concluded Junior Achievement (JA) Outreach programme, delivered across four schools — two in Ooty and two in Kothagiri. It was an experience I will cherish for a long time, for two reasons: being part of an initiative of this scale is a rare privilege, and the chance to contribute something meaningful to the community — especially to its children — is rarer still.
The Initiative
On 10 July 2010, the entire team travelled to Ooty and
Kothagiri to conduct JA's Careers with Purpose (CWP) programme. The programme
is designed to help students in classes IX to XII think more deliberately about
their career planning. Professionals from a range of disciplines partner with
JA to run the sessions, sharing their knowledge and real-world experience. By
the close of each session, every student should be able to appreciate the
wealth of opportunities available to them and to gain the confidence to look
beyond conventional career paths.
How the Programme Works
JA CWP is structured with clear, logical transitions
from one theme to the next. The sessions are highly interactive: questions are
put to students at every stage, and answers are drawn out collectively. Because
the objective is to help students choose the right career path — grounded in
their abilities, interests and expectations — the first step is to understand
what students believe a "job" actually is.
My First JA-CWP Session
When JA Outreach circulated a call for new volunteers,
I decided it was time to contribute more than financial support to social
causes. I signed up for the JA Outreach team and attended the orientation at
ASV on 19 June 2010. During the orientation, volunteers were invited to
nominate themselves as facilitators or observers for the upcoming sessions. The
comfortable choice was to begin as an observer before taking on facilitation,
and Ooty seemed like a good place to start.
A pleasant surprise, however, awaited me at Ooty. On
the eve of the session, a good friend enlisted me as a facilitator, alongside
another volunteer who had also signed up to observe. After a late night of
preparation and a quick round of training, we — the
observers-turned-facilitators — set out on our assignment on the big day.
10 July 2010 — Shanthi Vijaya Girls' School
After the initial ice-breakers, introductions and
expectation-mapping, we moved into the core activity. Our session was with the
Commerce students of Standard XII. When we asked what a job is and what they
expected from one, the responses were wonderfully varied — salary, serving the
community, supporting parents, social standing and creating employment for
others are a few I still recall. As we explored their views, we introduced the
"Goal Sheet," one of the programme's key artefacts, in which each
student records what they aspire to become and the higher education they intend
to pursue to get there.
A World of Opportunities
Having heard the students' own understanding of jobs
and their expectations, we then broadened their perspective. The most effective
way to do this is to take a single industry and unpack it completely, showing
how its many divisions work together to deliver an outcome. In our session, the
students chose the Anarkali chudidhar as their subject, and together we traced
a garment-manufacturing business down to its finest details — from cotton
farming, weaving and dyeing, through design, production and marketing, to
distribution and retail. We then mapped the various roles associated with each
stage, as well as the jobs that support the industry from the outside.
The exercise was thoroughly interactive, with students
identifying where different jobs might fit along the value chain. Their level
of participation was refreshing and encouraging. When they remarked that they
had never realised such a wide range of opportunities existed, there was a real
sense of having introduced them to something genuinely new.
Skills, Education, Experience and Knowledge
The World of Opportunities segment leads naturally
into helping students understand what employers look for when selecting the
right candidate. Here, we helped them appreciate why it matters to know the key
parameters attached to a particular job — the very factors that ultimately help
secure it. Each student made a smooth transition from recognising the breadth
of opportunities to connecting a chosen job with the specific skills,
supporting education, relevant experience and depth of knowledge it demands. The
segment concludes with the "Career Exploration Sheet," which students
keep for their own reference. It captures their likes and dislikes, values and
strengths, so that they can continue to work on the traits that will shape
their career journey.
Values, Interests, Strengths, Talents and
Attitude
By this point, students know what a job is, what kinds
exist across industries, and what employers expect of them. The natural
question that follows is: how do you choose the right one? How do you know that
"this" is the job for you? We begin with the importance of living by
one's values, and emphasise that the chosen job should align with the values a
person defines themselves by. The next consideration is interest — the work
should genuinely engage them. Everyone also has a core strength and a
distinctive talent, and the right choice should draw on both. Finally, and no
less importantly, comes attitude: all of these qualities make sense only when
expressed through the right attitude. The message we drive home is simple — a
job is right when it maps to these traits.
Think, Research, Plan and Act
We closed the session with a brief review of
everything covered, and underscored the importance of a long-term vision. The
students were now equipped to Think about what they want to become, to Research
how they can get there, to Plan the path around their ambitions, and finally to
Act to make it happen.
Words of our program lead
"We have ignited the minds of 2,888 students and
60 teachers across four schools in Ooty and Kothagiri, in a single day. This
was a joint execution by the Chennai and Coimbatore CSR teams. The
success came through 250 person-hours of detailed planning and 250 person-days
of flawless execution. Seven hours of the JA CWP in-class programme ran
simultaneously across 55 classrooms in four schools, reaching 2,888 deserving
students, delivered by around 100 volunteers."
Captured Moments....
Student's Huddle during the activity
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