Baseline survey and Vocational Training Need Assessment for Project Lehar

UNFPA
Baseline survey and Vocational Training Need Assessment for Project Lehar Request for proposal

Reference: IND8U601/Baseline Lehar
Beneficiary countries or territories: India
Published on: 14-Aug-2015
Deadline on: 28-Aug-2015 12:23 (GMT 5.30)

Description
  1. Background of the Lehar Project

Young people have always been a very important stakeholder group for United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) supported initiatives. Given the more clearly understood advantages of investing in young people, the Fund has positioned them at the center of its Strategic Plan. In 2012, UNFPA announced prioritized support for girls with special emphasis on geographical areas where girls are forced into marriage at early ages or coerced into sexual relations and exploitation.

“UNFPA’s new global initiative aims to invest in and scale up evidence-based and targeted interventions to reach the most vulnerable girls with the greatest need in 12 countries with high rates of child marriage in the next five years. The Lehar Project aims at empowering and improving the quality of life of adolescent girls in the city of Patna, Bihar. Most adolescent girls from disadvantaged communities face numerous challenges in developing and growing into responsible members of society and reaching their full potential. Many lack access to basic health information (including sexual and reproductive health), protection from violence/abuse/exploitation, quality education, and other such public services, which harms their overall well-being.

 

Guided by the national priorities and UNFPA’s mandate, it was decided to implement the Project Lehar with the following objective:

To develop a viable, scalable and replicable holistic model to empower adolescent girls from marginalized communities in Patna to prioritize their education, health and well-being.

 

Given the differing needs of adolescent girls based on their age bracket, the project will target younger and older adolescents through two separate mechanisms for implementing project activities: Learning Support Centres (LSCs) within existing government schools and Resource Centres (RCs) functioning outside the school system.

 

The strategic decision of locating LSCs within schools is informed by the Right to Education (RtE) Act, which clearly stipulates that government schools must provide “special training” for children who are unable to cope with the curriculum within the school framework. Furthermore, based on AKF (India)’s prior experience with LSCs, these centers, if located outside of schools, are at risk of being viewed as a parallel structure to government schools, thus encouraging students to drop out of school. By locating the LSCs in schools, Project Lehar will also seek to motivate girls who have dropped out of school to rejoin school and complete their secondary education.

 

The primary goal of LSCs during the project timeframe is to bridge learning gaps faced by adolescents and equip them with life skill training. It is expected that after the three year period the schools we are working with will have experienced considerable improvements in the scholastic performance of enrolled students resulting in the closure of LSCs in schools. However, should the schools indicate that they are interested in continuing to provide after-school scholastic support to students using the LSC model, these will be managed by the school administration and School Management Committees. 

 

The RCs will be located in AKF (India)’s current Girls Education Centres (GECs) and will be staffed by community teachers. The aim of RCs is to provide scholastic support to adolescent girls to enable them to complete their secondary education as well as equip them with life skills training, vocational education and career counselling as well as financial literacy training. Given the lack of an existing system for drop-out adolescent girls in this age group, we envisage that after the three year project time-frame the RCs will continue to be managed and run by AKF (India) through Resource Centre Management Committees.

Snap-shot of Project Strategies and Activities

 

Learning Support Centres

Resource Centres

Anganwadi Centres

Age group: 10-14

Grades: 6-9

No. of centres: 10

Location of centres: government schools

 

Main activities:

  • Scholastic (language, mathematics, social studies and science)
  • Non-scholastic support, namely life skills training – provided to both adolescent boys and girls enrolled in schools and drop-out girls

 

Staffing and management:

  • Life Skills educators will train government teachers on how to deliver life skills training to enrolled adolescent students; school teachers will administer life skills training.
  • Community teachers will provide scholastic support to adolescent girls after school hours.
  • Life Skills educators will provide health counselling to adolescent girls after school hours.
  • Managed by School Management Committees (SMCs).

 

Age group: 15-19

  • 10-12

No. of centres: 10

Location of centres: current AKF (India)-run GEC’s  (will run for 6 days a week)

Main activities:

  • Scholastic support for out-of-school girls to enable them to complete their secondary education through open schooling
  • Non-scholastic support, namely life skills training, vocational education and career counselling (group-based and one-on-one). A specific focus will be placed on financial literacy to help girls better understand and influence their economic future, as well as benefit from government entitlements and scholarship schemes.

 

Staffing and management:

  • Life Skills educators will train community teachers on how to deliver life skills training to adolescent girls enrolled in RCs; community teachers will administer life skills training. 
  • Community teachers will provide scholastic training and vocational education and career counselling
  • Life Skills educators will provide health counselling to adolescent girls.
  • Managed by Resource Centre Management Committees (RCMCs) which will supervise the centres, monitor students’ attendance and progress, and encourage parents to participate in their child’s education.

Age group: 10-19

  • 6-12

 

Project Lehar will support the 71 Anganwadi centres in Phulwarisharief-Danapur, through training to Anganwadi Workers on life skills education.

Main activities:

  • Training of Anganwadi centre workers on life skills education
  • Periodic support to Anganwadi centre workers in the form of review meetings and life skills training preparation sessions

 

Staffing and management:

  • Life Skills educators will provide training and capacity building to Anganwadi workers and equip them with the knowledge and skills to impart quality life skills education to adolescent girls.

 

  1. Objective of the baseline study

Following are the objectives of the baseline study of Project Lehar:

  1. To establish benchmark on key  indicators among adolescent girls related to literacy and numerical abilities as well as  knowledge, attitude and practices on issues related to their health and well being. The benchmark indicators will be used to compare the achievements of the interventions
  2. Provide needs assessment for vocational training among adolescent girls  
  3. Explore perspectives of the key stakeholders towards adolescents in the project area