The Big Problem? – HOME

The Big Problem?

The above video is a description of The Big Problem. Nearly 70% of school-going children in India are in the villages. The children in villages face many challenges compared to their urban peers. More than 90% of the children drop out of school. Besides having an incomplete education, they lack essential life skills like self-esteem, communication, confidence, teaming, empathy, resilience, values, etc.

As a result, they settle for low paying jobs as an adult. Initially it seems OK. But when they get married have kids, they find that the low-income jobs are inadequate to address their needs and the needs of their family. Due to low self-esteem, resilience and confidence, they get into a negative spiral. They indulge in anti-social behaviour as they consider these as the only means to address their problems.

In the case of the girl child, due to their lack of life skills, they succumb to their elder's suggestion to drop out of school or get into early childhood marriages. They are also unable to resist early pregnancies for the same reason. Consequently, they endanger their health and also give birth to highly malnourished children.

From our interaction with the community, we observed that this is an occurrence among most youth in the villages. While the Government and many Social Organizations are already addressing the academic aspects, there is minimal focus on developing life skills in village children. We as an organization are striving towards mitigating this issue by developing their life skills at their most impressionable age.