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JA India Newsletter 
Volume 4 Issue 3
October 2013
In This Issue
Latest News
Perspectives : Education - Its Importance, Purpose and Meaning in life
Perspectives: Education should be for life, not livelihood
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Greetings! As the festive season gets going and the end of the year looms ever closer, we are entering one of our busiest periods of the year. There has been a lot of activity since we last wrote to you - we have launched an exciting new program "World of Work", the ExxonMobil Energy Conservation competition in Bangalore concluded, JA IBC regional events were kicked off across India, JA India Alumni has been launched and we have reached out to more than 8000 students !  

 

Latest News

 

In the last 2 months, we have conducted JA MFM, WIN, JACWAP and JACWAP Lite programs across Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi-NCR and Chennai covering over 8000 students. Individual volunteers as well as volunteers from Barclays, Bechtel, Cognizant, Deloitte, ExxonMobil, HGS, KPMG, Steria and the Taj group supported this effort. New volunteers from different organisations such as Aarambh, Genpact, RRD, Dream a dream as well as JA Alumni (final year engineering students) sponsored by Steria were trained on JA modules and we look forward to their participation in JA programs going forward. Pre-program assessments were also carried out with students in Chennai.

 

Winning the Social Innovation Relay

"It feels like we are still living a dream". Thus begins the Youth Innovators team's chronicle of their journey to  the summit of the Social Innovation Relay, 2013. Click here to read their inspiring article on what it took to win the Social Innovation Relay and how it has changed their lives.

  


JA World of Work event brings students and professionals together
On September 7th, 2013, atthe World of Work (WoW) event organised by Junior Achievement India, students studying in classes 8-10 at Sri Kumaran Children's Home, interacted with an illustrious set of professionals from fields as diverse as medicine, film technology, art, management studies and child rights 
. Around 350 students got the opportunity to meet professionals from different fields face to face and ask them some of the career questions at the top of their minds. The event received great feedback from both students and the professionals, with some students saying, "The session was a pleasure . We felt motivated and it changed our perceptions about following our goals". You can view the videos of the sessions here and see the photos here. We look forward to doing more WOW events in the future. 

JA India Alumni page

The Youth Innovators team attended the JA-YE Alumni conference in Estonia in September and came back hugely inspired to kick-start the JA India Alumni programme. The aim of the JA Alumni is to instil in young students enthusiasm, passion and inner drive to fully commit themselves to the further expansion of JA and its emergence into a completely new stage of relationships. Do join us on the JA Alumni India page on facebook.

 

ExxonMobil Energy Conservation Competition

ExxonMobil Chemical India Pvt. Ltd (EMCIPL) and JA jointly launched an innovative inter-school competition in Bangalore, focusing on Energy Conservation. Participating schools include KK School, St. Thomas and Holy Cross in Whitefield, Bangalore.

 

Each school represented by a team of 15 students, created Energy Conservation models for homes, apartments, offices and city transport systems. They presented their models to a jury and ExxonMobil employees using live demonstrations, skits, mime acts, fashion shows, q&a sessions, recorded interviews and many more tools. The teams were judged on creativity, uniqueness of solution, practicability and most importantly team work. KK High School was the winner of the competition held on 7th September this year. All the students and volunteers were awarded prizes for their excellent work. This will be an ongoing event with a new theme every year.

 

ExxonMobil volunteers mentored each team all through the 6 weeks of preparation. Special thanks to EMCIPL and their team of volunteers for organizing the entire event.

 

Photos | Presentation | Video

 

JA India Business Challenge (JA IBC) 

JA IBC regional rounds were conducted across Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi. More than 1600 students from 70 different institutions participated in the regional events. Registrations for the National event will be announced soon, Stay tuned!

 

Perspectives

 

Stan A Pereira: Education - Its Importance, Purpose & Meaning in Life

 Dr. Stan A Pereira  is a former Senior Deputy Registrar (MKU), a Connoisseur of Art and an Individual Volunteer with JA

 

Personality is based on four major concepts namely Physical, Moral, Intellectual & Spiritual. Among the six factors- Ingrained Maturity, Environment, Education, Career, Experience and Ideals, that shape one's personality, Education is considered the most important one. While Ingrained Maturity relates to the intrinsic/inherent qualities (both inherited and acquired), Environment begins from the conception of the individual in the mother's womb; thereafter the upbringing from home and the immediate surroundings or circumstances in our life; Education is the indispensable and important factor that helps us inculcate all good values we grasp and imbibe from the beginning and ending of a person which is a continuous process till death.

 

In the existing scenario no one will dispute the fact that if you have everything else without education you are counted less important. Though experience is the mother of knowledge, we find if it is not backed up with Education then there's so much lacking in one's life. Career is the major part of your personality but Education crowns it all as it tends to help us inhale and exhale all the good ideals in life. The breath of life is God given. Education backed with other factors shapes the importance, Purpose and Meaning in Life.

 

"An educated person is honored wherever he goes" is a Tamil adage. It is this factor that our forefathers or ancestors so thoughtfully envisaged in us and left behind foot prints for us in the form of the multifarious Education Institutions that we presently have in our Environment today. These institutions throw open to us the choice of the career which we desire to pursue in life.


Education channelizes our behavioral pattern and characterizes our purpose in pursuing our career and helps us and others to live a better and more meaningful life in this competitive world.

Elizabeth Alexander: Education should be for life, not for livelihood

Elizabeth Alexander is a trained renal patient and family counselor, a volunteer under TANKAR Foundation (Tamil Nadu Kidney Research Foundation), MOHAN Foundation and an individual volunteer with JA

 

UNESCO has defined literacy as the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute and use the printed and written material and involve the individual to learn and enable them to achieve their goals, develop their knowledge and potential. The right to education is a fundamental right and UNESCO aims to educate all in India by 2015. Though levels of literacy in India have grown by almost 9% to 74.04 (82.14% for men, 65.46% for women), there is still a significant gap to be bridged. 

 

It is not only the literacy rate that matters but also the quality of literacy that matters. In our Indian education system a child starts school at the age of three. From the age of three to fifteen, students are forced to study all the subjects that are taught, whether they like them or not. At the higher secondary level they have to make choices that determine their future. However, at this stage is the student equipped to make the correct choice for his life?

 

Thus far, the focus of students in most of our colleges and universities has been on passing examinations and acquiring degrees. The broader purpose of education - acquiring knowledge and broadening one's vision, gets lost along the way. Our education system has to be changed to allow students to choose from a broader selection of subjects. When a science student in other countries can choose to study Economics as one of his subjects, why can't our Indian system allow that? A striking example of the inter-relationship between diverse fields is the recent world Oncology conference in Washington, USA. The conference was not just confined to those with a medical background, but had people from fields like Astronomy, Commerce, Economics and physical science presenting papers, showing how their field is contributing to treating cancer.

 

Thus, our education system should not confine students to a particular field or specific groups of subjects, but allow them a wider choice. Only then, will students be able to follow their passion and tap their knowledge and interest.

Thank you for taking the time to read our newsletter. Do let us know what you think - please reach out to Sucharita Venkatesh with your queries, feedback and suggestions. We would love to hear from you!   

Sincerely,
 
The JA India Team