YouthLink takes off

Youth Link grew out of the Auroville Retreat. Some months before the Retreat, Vikram, Jesse and other members of the RAS approached some Auroville youth to see if they would help involve youth in the Retreat process. This led to a series of meetings at the Youth Centre. “Maybe 30 to 40 young people came to some of these,” remembers Luca, “and we did rounds to see what everyone thought about the present Auroville and how things could be improved. One of the exercises was to put the Charter and The Dream into our own words and then brainstorm about how we could make Auroville better based upon these ideals. The content for our Retreat presentation actually came out of the Festival of Ideas, a one-day event we organized to get youth talking about their concerns and about Auroville’s future. Three themes came up strongly – the need for youth housing, higher education and employment – so at the Retreat we presented these as our main concerns.”

“The vision that came from the Retreat was really goal-oriented,” explains Kavitha, one of the core members of Youth Link, “but the vision that came out in our later project proposal was completely different – it was vaguer, yet more encompassing, it was about Auroville’s Charter and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. We were trying to create a vision and mission that would be able to include newly emerging youth initiatives and projects, rather than only be focused on the Retreat’s Goals.”

The main goals

Providing housing, employment and higher education for Auroville youth have remained their main concerns. So what progress have they made so far in achieving these goals?

“A lot of work has been done for housing,” says Vika, one of core members of Youth Link who also works in the Housing Service. “We began by finding out how many Auroville youth are in need of housing. So far, we know of fifty plus people who are looking for permanent housing, and most of them do not have the funds to build something. While Auroville at present provides accommodation for about forty young Aurovilians and volunteers, all of this is temporary housing: at some point these people have to move out.”

One possible solution is the projected ‘Humanscapes’ housing project. “explains Vika. “Originally it was planned to provide 500 living spaces for Aurovilians, Newcomers and volunteers,” explains Vika, “but planning permission has only been given for the first forty places, and now it has been decided that this initial phase will be for younger people. Youth Link was asked to come up with criteria for how such people would be selected and to send one representative to be on the client body for this project.”

“The problem is that we do not have enough youth who want to be involved in this kind of work or who have the necessary experience and skills,” says Kavitha. “At present, only four or five Aurovilians in their 20s are part of major Auroville Work Groups. The Governance Action Group is concerned about this and wants work groups to provide training through internships for young people. We were also thinking of arranging trainings in basic skill-sets so that young people can integrate into a working group more easily.”

Interestingly, young people are asking that the schools run an ‘Auroville class’ so that they can understand better how Auroville functions. They stress, however, that they want the high schools to cooperate in doing this as another of their goals is to bring the schools together.

The second of YouthLink’s major goals is to improve employment possibilities for Auroville youth. Here they have focussed on two approaches. Firstly, they have been collecting data about job opportunities in Auroville, and collecting a list of those in need of employment and their skill set/background/interests. Secondly, Angeli from YouthLink and Michael from the Auroville Campus initiative are developing an apprenticeship programme. The idea is to provide apprenticeships for Auroville youth in various areas. These would enable them to take up this kind of work in Auroville but would also be recognised outside Auroville as a qualification in that field.

“We have decided to start next year with apprenticeships in greenwork, carpentry, and food-related topics,” says Angeli, “and we are creating syllabuses for these topics. The apprenticeships are for those who are 16+, and the courses would last two years. Different Auroville units and workplaces would be involved for each topic. So for greenwork, Botanical Gardens, Pitchandikulam, Greencare and the Forest Group will provide expertise and experience of environmental conservation, botany, wildlife, forestry etc.”

They are hoping that the academic side could partly be provided by classes in the high schools. “It is quite difficult to get organised because so many people are involved,” admits Angeli, “so we are taking it step-by-step at present. But it’s working. If all goes well, after they have completed these apprenticeships the young people can go on to become land stewards, or join existing units or they can start up their own businesses.”

As for the education goal, for youth who are considering higher education YouthLink is making a database of university courses both in India and abroad. They would like more spaces to be available for Auroville youth in groups that visit Auroville for educational purposes, like the Living Routes programme that ran for many years. They would also like to work closely with the Auroville Campus Initiative and Education Action Group, who have similar goals of developing a Semester Programme and exploring the creation of an institute for Auroville’s higher education.

At the same time, Youth Link is working with Pitchandikulam outreach, where Kavitha is liaising with the Global Ecovillage Network to see if Ecovillage Design Education and Trainings could be held in Auroville for people in this locality. The Global Ecovillage Network’s youth branch may also be a good connection through which young leaders could be invited to Auroville for Youth Link’s planned Green Conference in 2018.

The challenges

Clearly, YouthLink has set itself ambitious goals. What are the challenges they have encountered so far?

“One of the big challenges is that at present, all the work falls on a few shoulders,” says Vika. “This work requires quite a lot of effort but some of us are already working full-time elsewhere for our maintenance, so we can only give the time and energy that remains over from this other work. We definitely need more people to come and join our core group. As the group grows and more experienced people come in, hopefully it will ease the workload because different people can focus on different objectives.”

So far, they haven’t structured themselves very much, although they do have coordinators, core group members and extended members.

But are they at all worried that they might become just another cog in the Auroville organizational ‘system’?

“I don’t think we have decided how we’re going to work or if we’re going to be different from other work groups,” says Usha. Angeli, however, recognizes the danger. “I’ve seen people’s attitudes change when they become part of a work group. It makes me very conscious and observant of everything we do in this group. I keep asking myself, what is this person’s intention, where is this coming from? So far everything is fine, but it is something I am concerned about.”

“Everything is still very fluid,” says Kavitha. “As new members come in, new goals seem to be emerging. At the moment, a lot of people in our group are trying to find their space, trying to discover what motivates them in relationship to youth in Auroville, and this takes time. We are still at a very early stage of our work.”

Some years ago, a film was made in which the first generation of Auroville children said they felt that doors were closed to them, that the youth did not get enough support from the older generation. Have this generation experienced this?

Kavitha nods. “I know a lot of youth who definitely have a hard time, whether it is dealing with the Housing Service or finding a mentor or whatever. I think it’s exactly because of this that I feel personally motivated to be part of this youth effort, because an individual voice is just a shout of protest, but as a group we will be taken more seriously.”

“I think certain doors are closed, but some are open,” says Angeli. “For example, the BCC asked for a young person from YouthLink to join them to see how they were working. These are the small green lights we’re getting here and there. We are not being told to go away.”

In fact, Youth Link is receiving more and more emails from Auroville groups and projects offering to include youth. These include the L’Ávenir project for solid waste management group, as well as an Auroville security proposal to provide part-time maintenances for fourteen younger people to work on security in the area. For this, they would receive training in various aspects of self-defence, first aid etc. Gijs from the Integral Entrepreneurship Lab has offered information on marketing, fundraising, and incubation, Ananda from the ABC has offered to teach accounting, while units like Aureka have agreed to give practical training for the apprenticeship programme.

Meanwhile the BCC has provided two full-time maintenances for two Youth Link coordinators and the Bharat Nivas group has provided Youth Link with office space. Both are temporary – the maintenances are only for six months, and Bharat Nivas has made it clear that providing a permanent space for youth is not part of their long-term plans – and the BCC has stressed that Youth Link has to find ways to make itself financially self-supporting. But the core team is grateful for this help because it gives the youth a breathing space, time to focus upon its core objectives without having to immediately begin fund-raising.

Is there any specific support the youth need from the community at present?

Kavitha mentions a proposal for the youth to build a new space for themselves. It would be a meeting point for different youth groups, include accommodation for youth and visiting student groups, and provide space for young people to start new units. The idea is it could be designed and constructed by the youth. The proposal has gone to the 2018 celebrations Visioning Committee and they have received some positive responses, but they would like the community as a whole to support this initiative.

Bringing people together

One of Youth Link’s major aims is to bring the larger community together around youth-themed events. One of their early initiatives was organizing the recent International Youth Day event at Bharat Nivas. It was a big success and now they want to repeat it each year. But how challenging was it to pull it off?

“We started organizing it very late,” says Vinay, “All the main work happened in the last week, but we got a lot of support from groups like Mohanam and people from Kuilapalayam and Edayanchavadi youth groups: everybody helped. In the end it went very smoothly.”

What played a bit part in making it a success, they say, was a two-day leadership course they did with Leena and Sheba about ten days before the event. There they got to know each other much better and it helped them establish a common vision.

The need for a common vision is crucial, given that they are defining the upper age of youth at thirty-five. How far do they feel they are accepted by and representative of this very diverse age group?

“From the beginning we said this is not just an Auroville thing,” explains one of the core group. “We want to include newcomers, guests, volunteers and other non-Aurovilian youth from this area. We would like all the people who are living here now and concerned about this area’s development to participate. So far, we have had a lot of support from the different schools and youth centres and organizations in Auroville and the local area. And even those who are not actively engaged definitely know what we are doing.”

“We are not doing things just for youth,” stresses Usha. “Whenever we organize events it will be for everyone. We want to do a service for the whole community by bringing people together and bringing people’s attention to certain issues.”

Kavitha remembers her early days in Auroville when there was a much greater sense of community. “Maybe the youth could play a part in recreating that spirit. At the same time, we realise that something like housing is an issue for all generations, particularly for those who are getting older, so we want to be involved in solving their problem as well.”