Young leader’s empowerment programme is an important programme designed to involve the young children in slum development programmes. The main objective of the programmes in selecting the young children who have potential leadership qualities and encourage them to become a bridge of change in the slums. The purpose of the programme is to develop leadership skills among group of young children aged between 14 to 18 years to participate, understand and learn the slum development change process.
Children were identified through self-assessment test on leadership skills followed by group discussions, conducted in all nine high schools and 32 slums total 957 children participated 347 boys, 610 girls wrote the leadership self-assessment test, out of 957, 146 children were shortlisted for second round of group discussions, 111 girls and 35 boys participated in the discussions.
The selection process of the Young Leaders was taken place in 2 stages
The participants’ details are as follows:
| Young Leader’s Empowerment Program | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Identification Process | No.of Participants | Boys | Girls |
| Self assesment test on leadership qualities | 957 | 347 | 610 |
| Group Discussions | 146 | 46 | 111 |
| Total No. of identified children | 50 | 21 | 29 |
After the group discussion sessions a total of 50 children, 29 girls and 21 boys were identified with good leadership qualities that were very enthusiastic and motivated to take part in the three day residential kick-off capacity building program. This program mainly focused on helping them understand the slums, how slums form in an urban setup, their population, the infrastructure, the day to day challenges they face and the need of communicating the problems to the Government departments and seeking solutions.
The young leaders also participated in training sessions carried out for different domains like Child Protection, Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and Health and Nutrition two days each for each program for 6 days.
