Apprenticeships for youth

Auroville Today: Over the past year, much energy has gone into developing an apprenticeship programme for youth. Why?

Aurevan: The general trend of education in Auroville has been concentrating more and more on education of the mind, an education that is not necessarily focussed on Auroville but follows a system that has little to do with what is happening here or what we are doing here. We need to create different educational possibilities, of which apprenticeships can be one example, something that teaches you skills and a way of approaching life that is more integral than the education offered at present.

Suryamayi: It’s important to diversify the educational models and opportunities that are available here so that people have the opportunity to connect with the education that they want.

Kavitha: It is important to provide students with the opportunity to leave Auroville and study elsewhere if they so wish: I certainly benefitted from this. This is why the academics came in. But what was missing in my education here was an opportunity to explore in a deeper sense why I am in Auroville and how Auroville works.

What excites me about one aspect of this proposed programme is giving people the space to look at Auroville more deeply.

How did this programme start? How has it evolved?

Suryamayi: Apprenticeship possibilities always existed. If somebody wanted to follow an internship or apprenticeship in a particular field and had enough willpower to find someone in the community to help them, they could do it. More recently, it began to get more organized. For example, Vikram has been working with Future School students on a case-by-case basis to find placements and apprenticeships for them in Auroville.

The Budget Coordination Committee, on the initiative of the Human Resource Team, has also allocated seventeen maintenances for apprenticeships. Currently, four young Aurovilians are receiving such maintenances.

Kavitha: Before the Retreat, which happened in March, 2015, Jesse and Vikram initiated a series of conversations with young Aurovilians. The topic of higher or further education came up, and that’s when we started discussing apprenticeships. It was further highlighted in the goals of some of the groups during the Retreat.

Angeli, who worked with us in YouthLink, very strongly resonated with those goals. As a young girl she had been looking for alternative forms of training where the process of learning what she wanted was more vivid and motivating to her. She wanted the youth in Auroville to have more opportunities and to bring people together to create more possibilities for further learning in Auroville.

Aurevan: I met Angeli, who was full of enthusiasm about this programme. However, she was leaving and she said nobody was picking it up, so I agreed to help.

I began working with Mike from Auroville Campus Initiative, which had also decided to work on an apprenticeship programme. We began by focussing upon one apprenticeship topic – forestry – to learn how to construct such a programme as a model for other apprenticeships. It was a little trying because people are busy with their work and it hasn’t always been easy to find the foresters in the forest. Once found, great enthusiasm always followed. It was very rich because I met people who I had known when I was very little and suddenly I heard their stories and their dreams.

Then Shandra joined us. She said we should not focus on programme development until we found out who the potential apprentices might be and what they wanted from such a course. She went to the various schools, spoke to the students, and asked what kind of internships or apprenticeships they were interested in.

Kavitha: When Suryamayi had stepped in, she really brought an energy to widen the conversation and include all stakeholders concerned. Her efforts to initiate deeper contact with all schools, teacher trainers, apprenticeship trainers and, most importantly, the youth themselves, has helped shape the vision for our work. I am personally very grateful to Suryamayi for bringing this topic of apprenticeships to the community at large.

Suryamayi: At a certain point, it became clear that we also needed a core programme that everybody – apprentices and interns – would participate in, irrespective of their choice of topic, where they would learn basic essential skills. We identified four key areas – leadership, communication, applied maths and computer skills – and began contacting people to take up different aspects of this programme. Very importantly, the core programme would also include an introduction to Auroville’s ideals and organization as well as an opportunity for apprentices and interns to share their experiences of the programmes.

Deepti from Last School and Heidi Watts gave some valuable advice. They both told us not to plan the whole core programme but to start with a group of students and find out what they are interested in and what they want to learn from such a programme. Different people may have very different needs, so always give them a choice. But make them choose, because then you compel a certain engagement; you compel people to be active in forming their own education.

So we really want to serve what the youth want, not to create programmes based on our ideas of what we think they want or need to learn.

What is the difference between internships, apprenticeships and fellowships?

Suryamayi: Internships are short-term (1–3 months) work experience opportunities in Auroville units and services. Apprenticeships are long term (6 months – 3 years) hands-on trainings and studies in Auroville units and services. Fellowships are opportunities to gain skills and experience in Auroville’s working groups.

One of the things that emerged strongly from a survey we did is that very few young people are willing to commit to an apprenticeship right away. Many would like to do a number of internships first. This way they can explore the different areas and get a sense of what they want to do.

The idea for what we term “fellowships” came out of a conversation with the Governance Action Group in which they said they wanted to see more youth involved in the working groups of Auroville. Fellowships could be for those youth who already have gained experience, either academic, work or apprenticeship-based, in a field that is relevant to the working group.

In the last phase of an apprenticeship the individual would carry out a project that would draw upon everything they had learnt. For the fellowship programme, we want to encourage youth to take up a research project related to the group. It would give them an opportunity to bring something to the group that is their unique contribution.

What are the programmes that are on offer at present?

Suryamayi: We know from Vikram’s database that there are a huge number of Aurovilians who are willing to offer internships in services or units. Because the internship is short-term and often part-time, it allows people in services or units to offer something without the pressure of having to train someone.

There are also several apprenticeships possibilities. Lilith Fashion school offers 3 year fashion design apprenticeships. There are others taking place in units, like Sunlit Future or Aureka, and some in services, like the Electrical Service. Some, like Electrical Service and Auroville Bakery, include a job offer at the end if it all works out.

Aurevan: We are also trying to develop a second type of apprenticeship in which the apprentice would not just be working with one individual or unit, but with different individuals and units in the same field to create a more all-round apprenticeship. We are trying this with forestry, farming and with cooking.

How much interest has there been so far?

Aurevan: We have more than ten people who want to do internships over the summer and six people interested in starting apprenticeships in August.

What is expected of the mentors?

Kavitha: There will be different types of mentors. The ones teaching a particular apprenticeship skill will be ‘trainers’. Then there will be a separate pool of mentors for the more academic aspects and resource people for the core programme. There would also be a younger group of peer advisors. These are people who have already gone through apprenticeships, either in Auroville or outside, and who will be able to advise and support the students on the basis of their own experience.

How do you ensure that the trainers and mentors have the ability to communicate their skills or knowledge to the youth?

Suryamayi: Heidi Watts pointed out that these people, who are our most precious resource, will also need support. As a first step, we are providing the core programme so that trainers, for example, don’t feel overburdened by having to teach skills they may not have the time or aptitude to teach.

Kavitha: Auroville’s Teachers Centre has been catering to teachers from our schools but it could eventually include the mentors and trainers in these teacher-training programmes.

Aurevan: I think we should focus on getting a diversity of mentors and trainers rather than focusing on educating them. The idea is to get as wide a group of individuals together as possible who can cater to different aspects of a topic in their own way, and let the student integrate this input.

Have you thought about getting outside recognition for the Auroville apprenticeships?

Suryamayi: Yes, but as yet we don’t know how these will be received across the world. One hopeful example is that Anna, a graduate of Lilith Fashion School, has just been accepted in one of the top design schools in Berlin on the basis of a portfolio she made of her apprenticeship here at Lilith.

So, for many of the apprenticeships we’ll have a portfolio process, modelling it on the professional portfolio which is a recognised form in architecture, art education etc.

Aurevan: As more of our apprentices go out and prove they are made of solid stuff, hopefully, the Auroville apprenticeship programme will gain wider recognition and acceptance. Creating recognition for Auroville education in general has been a long time dream and is a need for the community if we are not to fall prey to curricula and standards which limit us, and often do not reflect the values, dreams or quality of excellence which Auroville aspires to. Hopefully, apprenticeship programmes could be a step in acquiring recognition for Auroville education at large.

Kavitha: The Global Eco-village Network inspired Gaia Education, which is a member of the UNESCO global action programme. It runs a series of different courses. One of them is a short four-week programme that looks at a locality or community through the lenses of ecology, social, economy, and worldview.

We are going to run such a course in Auroville later this year for youth in Auroville, the bioregion and from further afield. In future, if this UNESCO-backed qualification is included in addition to the portfolio it could give our apprenticeship qualification more weight.

Do you see these internship and apprenticeship programmes as part of a larger movement you would like to see happening in Auroville?

Aurevan: Yes. I realise that many of the kids I’ve grown up with are doing jobs they don’t enjoy because they need a maintenance. Education in Auroville should allow a child to find out what he or she is passionate about. Perhaps internship and apprenticeship programmes can create a platform for that.

Suryamayi: My hope is that these programmes could be another opportunity to engage with the concept of integral and unending education. I believe in creating spaces that allow people to explore our ideals on the ground, to concretise them, and I see these programmes as a possible platform for that.

Kavitha: At the Retreat, a group of young people decided to address issues affecting their generation. They defined the three major issues as housing, education, and employment. Now it has come to a point where education has manifested as this larger community engagement for apprenticeships and internships. For example, the apprenticeship programme is supported by the high schools and creates a possibility of connectivity between the high schools which has not existed in the past.

My joy is in seeing the engagement of the youth themselves in designing unending education-inspired programmes.