YOUTH EMPOWERMENT & SKILL DEVELOPMENT

Youth is the backbone of any Country and the strongest catalyst that can bring about change around them in their own families, communities, society and Country at large.

We are committed to:

Create a pool of young and independent people from a section of eligible and underprivileged youth and women through skill up gradation and livelihoods in accordance with market requirements to aid economic growth; skill up-gradation through vocational training of deserving and most marginalized youth and women; Gender equity and women empowerment ; development and empowerment of youth and adolescents by utilizing their limitless energies and potential through, Camping, Leadership programmes, Sports, cultural, literary and other youth activities which can inculcate among them a sense of patriotism, selfless service, dignity of labour, fraternity, brotherhood and overall discipline in broader sense.

We aim for development and empowerment of youth by utilizing their limitless energies for Nation building.

Youth are the change agents of the society, who has the capacity to change the society but unfortunately they are mislead and misused by political parties and marginalized by policy makers. Unemployment, lack of proper counseling and absence of opportunities for growth for youth in J&K makes them easy prey to forces working to divert them to harmful and potentially destructive ways of life. The decades-old conflict in J&K has also drastically brought the level of education to its lowest ever, leading to their inability to qualify for jobs, thus swelling the number of jobless.

NDF works towards creating a safe and protective environment for the youth in J&K by organising various positive activities to channelize their limitless and boundless energies for constructive means and also to inculcate among them a sense of belongingness, tolerance and co-existence.
There are large number of educated young in J&K who are bearing the brunt of the lack of employment and struggle to find jobs due to the lack of a job policy in J&K. Limited employment opportunities based only on academic qualifications alone; presence of large number of unskilled labor in the rural areas; limited employment opportunities for youth with traditional skill sets; lack of awareness among youth of new skills or entrepreneurship opportunities beyond petty business, tailoring, beauty parlours and basic computers; lack of entrepreneurship skills to initiate a business, low access to seed capital for business development are some of the major challenges for youth in J&K.
One of the causes behind the rising trend of drug addiction in J&K is unemployment. Unemployed youth have only two options; either they apply for government jobs or start their own businesses - something that has also been marred by uncertainties. Thus, there is an urgent need to assess the various dimensions of problems of the youth in J&K and take immediate steps to harness their energy and zeal in the right manner to bring them into National mainstream.

Through our Youth Empowerment & Skill Development work we focus on:

NDF aims at creating a pool of young and independent people from a section of underprivileged youth through skill up gradation and providing livelihoods in accordance with market requirements to aid economic growth. We work to upgrade the existing skill set among the youth through vocational and life skill trainings to improve their opportunities for income generation. We intend to bridge the gap between demand & supply of skilled manpower in the fast emerging market and service industry.

The community development and livelihood programme aims at building sustainable livelihood of the poor with holistic approach comprising of components of capacity building, education and skills training. We work in sync with government development programmes and facilitate linkages to public services and schemes for the project beneficiaries.

Milestones achieved in Youth Empowerment & Skill Development:

• Five Lakh Youth and adolescents attended National Integration camps, Youth Camps, Rallies and youth activities aiming at engaging youth in constructive activities.
• 400 youth imparted Vocational training under different trades under various programmes of NDF
• 500 youth attended youth exchange programme for exposure and learning.
• 600 youth attended adventure awareness camps and activities.
• 2500 youth and adolescents participated in adolescent Melas and exhibitions .
• Apart from above a large number are youth are volunteers with NDF at grossroot level

Some of our Livelihood & Skill Development work includes:

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  Organize National Integration Camps and Youth Exchange Programmes on communal harmony and peace to inculcate sense of belongingness and co-existence

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  Organize leadership training programmes for personality development and leadership inculcation among youth.

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  Provide various platforms to youth to raise their voices among duty bearers and stakeholders to strengthen youth policies

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  Provide sustainable livelihood support to the most marginalised families to uplift their income and improve their standard of living.

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  Livelihood support is provided as per the existing skills in the household to ensure sustainability of the support provided.

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  The beneficiaries are trained on skills that are required to run the livelihood support thus, enabling them to make optimum utilisation of support provided.

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