WORKSHOPS

Niren Chaudhary (Global President of Yum! Brands Inc.) gave our Udayan Shalinis of North Delhi Chapter a new definition of courage, hope, optimism and gratitude by sharing his personal story of his daughter, whom he lost when she was 18, due to pulmonary fibrosis disease. A motivational speaker at INK conference (motivational talk platform), she authored My Little Epiphanies, a book about her own life; how she maintained her equilibrium and positivity despite her debilitating disease.

“One should not consider themselves unfortunate as someone else is sure to be worse than us.”

Her motivating thoughts, echoed in our Udayan Shalini Fellows’ hearts and gave them a new perspective of life. They learnt that how bad may be the circumstances, one should have positive attitude towards life, ‘Never give up’ was the ultimate learning for them from this motivational lecture.

Similarly, workshops on various career prospects were also conducted for our North Delhi chapter.  Mr. Sameer Pathak, General Manager-Coca Cola India Inc., enlightened our Shalinis with some mind boggling thoughts and encouraged them to think out of the box.

Facilitator made fellows aware about various job portals, phone applications to looking for job openings and job fairs. Fellows could get to know some other job profiles apart from teacher, engineer, doctor, etc. of which they were not even aware, like that of financial analyst, radiologist, etc.

Similarly, our chapters across India conducted workshops on different topics for Shalini Fellows.  Our Gurgaon USF chapter conducted small group workshop on Career Orientation, conducted by Mr. B.S Hothi, Professor IIPC. The aim of this workshop was to make our Shalini fellows aware about various career opportunities after graduation.

"The opportunities in life are like rain drops, and our level of receptiveness depends upon the way we keep our buckets open", with this belief the workshop was commenced and Shalinis were made aware of various new and demanding fields, offering good career opportunities in the field of Science, Arts, and Commerce.

“I have learnt that we all are unique and all have something in which we are good at, identifying the same and if working towards, nobody can stop in succeeding.”
~ Seema, Udayan Shalini Fellow (Gurgaon)

Workshop on women empowerment was also conducted by the facilitator of psychology background at Gurgaon chapter. The session was commenced by asking the girls about “empowerment” and detailed discussion was done on the topic of women’s empowerment by Dr. Shilpa, Professor-Dronacharya Government college, MDU, which was referred to for increasing and improving the social, economic, political and legal strength of the women, to ensure equal-right to women, and to make them confident enough to claim their rights.

“The session on “Women Empowerment” has opened my mind to understand the importance and joy of living freely, a life of self worth, respect and dignity for a woman.”
~Neha, Udayan Shalini Fellow (Gurgaon)

Small group workshops on exam preparedness were organized at our Udayan Shalini Fellowship, Jaipur chapter.  These workshops were organized in different government schools and facilitated by Anju Choudhary (from USF Jaipur Chapter).  The purpose of these workshops was to brief students about the ideal way of handling exam stress.

“I have learnt the way of effective learning. It will be very useful for me and my stress is very much away after this session. Most of the things I was unaware of, but now I have understand the importance of time table and small preparation for exams.”
~ Charu (Udayan Shalini Fellow, Jaipur)

This is a testament to the fact that the facilitator succeeded in expressing and putting across her ideas effectively. The session included little things, which students need to avoid during examinations like to adapt the habit of preparing own notes while doing revisions, etc.

Career counseling workshop was organized at Dehradun Chapter for our Shalinis. The session was conducted by a panel of experts and covered important points on various career options for the graduation and as well as for 11th/12th students. The sessions threw light on the various facets of a career choice and its determining factors, such as aptitude and interest, life span of a career, commercial resources, availability of opportunity, academic potential were explained through relevant examples. Some of the sessions were conducted by Mr. Ashok Kumar (IPS) (Add. Dir Gen of Police) on the preparation of civil services exams; Dr. Alaknanda Ashok (Director, Women’s Institute of Technology) talked on important tips for developing their skills of cracking entrance exams; Mr. Amit Goswami (Director- “Will and Skill” Company) discussed about developing career in the field of training and research; Dr. D. S. Pundir (Director- HIMAD organization) on career option in the field of social work; Mrs. Anita Gairola (Head of City Patrol Unit- Uttarakhand Police) on traffic rules and ethics; Mr. S. N. Verma (Director of UJVNL, Uttarakhand) on various technical department and courses available for students; etc. It was an interactive session where our Shalinis learned a lot and cleared their doubts by asking various questions from the experts. Arshi Khan (Shalini from Batch 8th) hosted the whole programme and Mr. Vimal Dabral (Convener, Dehradun, USF Chapter), gave the vote of thanks.

At Kolkata chapter, workshops were held with the leaders of industries to expose the Shalinis to the trends and domains of industries. Mr. I N Chatterjee and Mr. C K Sengupta held sessions with our Shalinis. Mr. Chatterjee is an independent consultant, trainer and mentor and conducts well-structured training programmes cum workshop for corporate executives and also a visiting faculty at IBS, Mumbai. He started the session with a short video film on a disabled young girl and then a short animated film on Oil Exploration & Production, spoke briefly on general oil and gas scenario globally and domestically, Oil economics and pricing volatility, Its impact in a country like India and future outlook.
Mr. Sengupta has over 37 years in Accounting and Financial Management practice in PSUs in Petroleum Sector including Indian Oil Corporation Ltd, Oil India Ltd and Bharat Petroleum Corporation. He spoke on the topic of Corporate Governance, which included ‘How to Measure Good Corporate Governance’ and ‘Four Pillars For Effective Governance’, etc.
Mr. Nikil M Sakhre (an Author, Writer, Motivational Speaker and Consultant) having a unique experience in the educational and professional world addressed our Shalinis in Aurangabad, on the topic "The Law of Thinking". He explained to the Shalinis that you don't always get what you want but you always get what you vibrate. Also he gave his insight about the conscious and sub conscious mind.
Mr. Arun Pachisia conducted a financial management workshop for more than 1050 Shalinis at Aurangabad. Mr Pachisia, an Engineering Graduate from Mumbai University is a trained financial planner. He explained the importance of money and its proper planning. Our Shalinis learnt the negatives of BC (monthly kitty pool) which has become a part of all female societies in India and responded very well to the interaction.

Kurukshetra Shalinis were exposed to a wholesome interactive lecture by none other than the visiting ASOS CFO, Helen Ashton, and Louise McCabe, heading CSR there. Helen elaborated on the concept of ‘LEAN IN’ and spoke of the book by the same name, by Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, and counseled Shalini to move towards empowerment by leaning in themselves. Our girls were fascinated and had such a lot of questions. Louise stepped in to tell them about ASOS philosophy. True to her promise, Helen sent 10 copies of the books for girls to gorge upon, as soon as she reached back to London.

ADOBE SOFTWARE TRAINING

Our Information Technology centres conduct creative and meaningful workshops regularly for students to make them more familiar with latest information technology tools. On several occasions, our students proved us right by showing their talent by using creative skills. Similarly, on the occasion of New Year our students prepared greeting cards and did the interior decorations of the centres, using their skills.

Our Adobe Youth Leadership Programme strongly focuses on providing appropriate trainings to our students in Adobe software as well as soft skills. Therefore, Soft Skills games were conducted for the students who had completed one month training in English Communication. The session conducted for the first batch and the second batch, was full of both, fun and learning.

Learning about ALTERNATIVE CARE

The two-day workshop on ‘Alternative Care for Children’, held in December 2016, by Udayan Care, in partnership with UNICEF, has initiated a timely discussion on deinstitutionalisation and its complex implications for child care in India for children, who are out of home care. It was inaugurated by Ms Rashmi Saxena Sahni, Joint Secretary MECD and Mr. Javier Aguliar, Chief of Child Protection at UNICEF and attended enthusiastically by Government and NGO practitioners.

The workshop report has now been published and uploaded on our website at http://www.udayancare.org/Workshop-Report_17-02-2017.pdf
One participant said that " the workshop was very helpful in disseminating information on the basic concepts of alternative child care and I learnt a lot for the first time. I wish to attend more such workshops to enhance my understanding and be able to lead a life of purpose, while attending to the children, who are out of their own family network!"