Career guidance for school dropouts and sexual abuse survivors

The programme is being run by trained career guides under the Career Guidance and Adolescent Counselling Cell (CGACC) of the general education department.

In a first of its kind initiative, the general education department has rolled out an extensive career guidance programme for school dropouts and sexual abuse survivors in girls' shelter homes under the Kerala Mahila Samakya Society (KMSS).

The society has two types of shelter homes in every district with one dedicated for school dropouts and comprising predominantly of tribal community members and the other for sexual abuse survivors.

Of the combined total inmates of 288, the programme, which will be largely reserved for those who have passed SSLC and plus two, will now benefit 142. The programme is being run by trained career guides under the Career Guidance and Adolescent Counselling Cell (CGACC) of the general education department.

“Rather than limiting to one-time career guidance, we plan to follow-up their cases meticulously up to a point where they attain academic stability. We have already conducted sector-specific career orientation sessions largely with the help of women teachers and it has evoked very good response,” said Jeevan Babu, director, general education and KMSS.

The sessions helped the inmates to clear their confusions and make the correct choice in keeping with their aptitude.

“Already 14 girls have chosen law as their career and are being trained to crack either the national-level Common Law Admission Test or State-level Kerala Law Entrance Examination while another eight are preparing for medical entrance,” said Bobby Joseph, State Consultant, KMSS.

Similarly, separate training modules are being held for various streams. The orientation course in the first phase was held on Zoom over five days with the experts drawn from diverse fields. They cleared the doubts of the participants and guided them to career choices based on their aptitude and imparted awareness about various premier institutes in their chosen fields.

“In the second phase, we plan to attach two career guides to each home. They will visit the homes once in a fortnight or a month and constantly interact with the inmates. It will continue to a point where they become self-sufficient either academically or professionally,” said C.M. Azeem, State coordinator, CGACC.