Supanth
Sustainable Upliftment and Training with Honour
DSS has been working with children from marginalized communities, bringing education to their doorstep since 1989. Project SUPANTH adds a new dimension of ‘skill building through vocational training’ to our work.
Our projects focus on solving 3 main challenges in education of children from underprivileged backgrounds –
1. Non-enrollment of children
2. Children dropping out of school
3. Children lagging behind in academic performance
During our project visits to different communities, we come across youth who have left mainstream education and now perform odd jobs to support their families or are unemployed. Most of them having no complete formal education / employable skill, become part of the unorganized unskilled labour force. They earn bare minimum and the vicious cycle of poverty continues.
What if they are introduced to vocational education while they are in school where they can learn skills to be employable? What if they become aware of vocational training opportunities available to them now and can easily access them?
Project SUPANTH focuses exactly on bridging this gap. It endeavours to empower the youth (14 to 25 years) from marginalized communities towards better employment and self-employment opportunities by providing them sustainable avenues of skill, productivity, and talent development, in line with the Skill India Mission. We strive to:
- Build a positive approach among the youth towards various vocations.
- Improving their access to skills training by connecting them with multiple institutions.
The key activities while working with Youth include – 1. Surveys 2. Aptitude testing and counselling 3. Information sharing about available skill development and employment opportunities. It also includes collaborating with other organizations which provide such courses and job opportunities.
In 2021-22, we partnered with various training organisations like ITI Aundh, ICICI Foundation, Light House, Tata Strive, and Lend-A-Hand India. They conducted online and offline sessions with the youth on various vocational opportunities such as administration, retailing, tallying, nursing, and fashion designing, to name a few.
Working with younger children:
The New Education Policy 2020 acknowledges the value of vocational education. The policy proposes that every student learn “at least one vocation” and be “exposed to several others.” The policy says that all students will participate in a 10-day bagless period sometime between grades 6 to 8. During this period, the students will intern with local vocational experts such as carpenters, gardeners, potters, artists etc. Early exposure, access to information, and hands-on experience can widen the knowledge-base of children, build their observation-based learning capacity, understand practical applications along-with dignity of labour, and help in choosing career /education options later on.
In line with this NEP 2020 guideline, Project SUPANTH focuses on younger school-going children from underprivileged backgrounds for awareness and exposure to vocational education.
The Project team formulated a ten-days curriculum for class VI/ VII. With approval from the Education Department, we successfully implemented a pilot of 10 Bagless days in four Municipal Corporation schools for class VI students.
Overall, the project aims to work with both schools and communities so that the children and youth are well-informed, guided, and have better access to skill-development opportunities and job opportunities for their better future.
If you are interested in conducting vocational counselling sessions with children in government schools under Bagless Days or
You are an organization interested in collaborating with us in Project Supanth – please connect with us here: