Snapshot of “Career Counselling”
Now we see a lot of career counselling done in schools. This is easily available for an urban
child. Apart from the other hurdles they face, the rural children do not have the right
orientation for what they are best at. Lot of children just pick up some profession what they
are exposed to or just leave the choice to the fate. If this situation has to change, the
individual should atleast know what direction of career and education would be best for
him/her. Having this in mind, we set our steps to provide career counselling.
We first contacted the Education department for permission to conduct it in all rural
Government schools. We received a strong refusal as they pointed out that they have a
Government employee for this purpose who is paid Rs.10,000 p.m. (:-?) So they did not want a
private organization to do any. Since we were well acquainted with the Principal of
Abishegapakkam, we conducted a career counselling test at Abishegapakkam Govt. School. An
organization named Sudha helped us in preparing the test papers, evaluation and individual
counselling. 116 students participated in the test on Feb 9th, 2005. We distributed the
individual reports on March 10th, 2005. When this counselling took place, we understood that
most of these career / higher education options could not be opted because of the language
barrier. That is when, we felt the utmost necessity to make them learn English. This led to the
activity "Have fun with English". Furthermore, our plans of "Professional coaching for
competitive exams", "Enjoy Learning - Maths, Science, Computers" and "Nurturing the Genius"
are not able to take off as basic knowledge of English is required.
child. Apart from the other hurdles they face, the rural children do not have the right
orientation for what they are best at. Lot of children just pick up some profession what they
are exposed to or just leave the choice to the fate. If this situation has to change, the
individual should atleast know what direction of career and education would be best for
him/her. Having this in mind, we set our steps to provide career counselling.
We first contacted the Education department for permission to conduct it in all rural
Government schools. We received a strong refusal as they pointed out that they have a
Government employee for this purpose who is paid Rs.10,000 p.m. (:-?) So they did not want a
private organization to do any. Since we were well acquainted with the Principal of
Abishegapakkam, we conducted a career counselling test at Abishegapakkam Govt. School. An
organization named Sudha helped us in preparing the test papers, evaluation and individual
counselling. 116 students participated in the test on Feb 9th, 2005. We distributed the
individual reports on March 10th, 2005. When this counselling took place, we understood that
most of these career / higher education options could not be opted because of the language
barrier. That is when, we felt the utmost necessity to make them learn English. This led to the
activity "Have fun with English". Furthermore, our plans of "Professional coaching for
competitive exams", "Enjoy Learning - Maths, Science, Computers" and "Nurturing the Genius"
are not able to take off as basic knowledge of English is required.