World Youth Council - A platform for change!
Updated: Jul 29, 2020
By Deshna Jain
"A platform to bring about change"
That’s how any change leader will describe World Youth Council.
World Youth Council or WYC is a place where young minds come together and lay the grounds to make the world a better place, to lay the foundation for a brighter tomorrow – but that was all the poetic stuff.
What does World Youth Council do? We work on social issues to provide relief to those who need it most. Since this organization mostly consists of college going youth who are yet to start earning, and so unable to contribute monetarily, we focus on areas where we can contribute otherwise. That is perhaps why our strongest and most successful programs have been centered on teaching. We have reached out to children all across India with our programs and taught everything from academics to extracurricular activities.
Our first successful endeavor is called Teach Your Talent. The idea was simple. Hobbies, talents, skills, activities that we take for granted, and often take multiple classes for, are nothing short of a luxury for many, unfortunately not far from us. Education, if accessible, is given primary importance, after survival of course and developing a hobby becomes something that there is neither the time, nor the resources for. To try and bridge this gap, college students, young office goers, and even high school students came together, visited various slums and other backward areas in and around Delhi and taught children fun and skill building subjects like music, cricket, football, martial arts, self defense, public speaking, arts and crafts, western and classical dance, and theatre and drama.
After it started full swing as an urban regular program in Delhi, we expanded Teach Your Talent to seven cities like Kanpur, Guwahati and Agra. The team also organized a Rural Boot Camp to the villages around Jim Corbett where our ‘Waste Warriors’ taught children about the 4 ‘R’s and the impact of littering and wastefulness. That June also saw WYC’s first Summer Camp. In December, the team decided to gift children a Christmas Camp as well, where on the day of Christmas, all the children put up special performances to celebrate! The volunteers – who we call Change Leaders – and the kids alike enjoyed the Teach Your Talent initiative to the full and bonded with each other. There wasn’t just skill enhancement in the children, but also a rise in their confidence levels.
After the successful camps, the WYC team planned its second Rural Boot Camp to Jaisalmer, to go and teach in areas of need there; however, that trip couldn’t be made because of the unfortunate circumstances of the pandemic.
Stopping our journey at a time when schools were shut down, and children were suffering academically more than usual didn’t seem to be the right thing to do. Education needed to continue, because those without access to it would fall into a lag and face even more difficulties trying to cover up.
These concerns paved the way for our current, pan India movement, Teach From Home. It began in Delhi, with the children we had worked with before. Volunteers applied, were screened by the team, and taught children their school subjects – from home –through online media like WhatsApp video calls and Google Meet.
After watching its success, we took the movement forward. We opened up forms on Internshala for college students all around India to apply and teach children in need around them. We figured that us as an organization in Delhi wouldn’t be able to reach the unseen poor – the children of domestic help, gardeners, fruit sellers, daily wage workers. This could only be done by people who live around them.
We can say with heartwarming pride that we received over 15,000 applications, reached over 100 cities with at least 2500+ active volunteers teaching 3000 + children.
The formula is simple, 1 volunteer – 1 child. It was said somewhere that it’s okay if you can’t change the world. You can change the world for that one child, and that’s enough.
Right now, we are planning to reach wider. We are curating worksheets for children who don’t have access to internet of even phones. These worksheets will be sent to as many areas as we can so that students aren’t held back by the unavailability of yet another facility we take for granted. We are always on the lookout for change leaders who can help us change the world for young minds full of potential and spirit, always eager to learn and step forward.