YouthLink Auroville – good spirit nurturing dreams

“Auroville will be the place of an unending education, of constant progress, and a youth that never ages.” – The Mother

In March 2015, a large community process – the Auroville Retreat – was held, inviting all Aurovilians to participate. It was initiated by the Vision Task Force, consisting of members from the International Advisory Council, Governing Board and Working Committee. Youth was one of the Retreat’s themes for reflection, and one outcome was a decision to start an initiative to help address their needs. The goals related to this were defined with milestones regarding youth integration in all aspects of the Auroville community life: housing, education and employment.

YouthLink was thus created as a collective space to provide information and space for young adults to organise events, educational and training sessions, and incubate projects. Exploring “community” as a central theme for the evolution of humankind, it would represent: a platform to address youth needs and assist younger generations; an opportunity for older mentors to share their wisdom with the future generations; and a bridge between Auroville, its bioregion, India and the world.

Composed of a core team of Auroville youth and volunteers between the ages of 18-35, the original team included Kavitha, Angeli and Michael, joined by Natasha, Madhu, Sathish, Arul, Tenzin and Ankita, and over the years, numerous French volunteers. One of the first points that was agreed on was Succession Planning, a topic very much in the forefront of the youths’ minds in Auroville. It was decided to revamp YouthLink every five years, which meant changing the executive members, no “pending” projects, and a clean slate. This would allow every new team to analyse the existing situation and needs, and adapt their modus operandi accordingly.

Since then, YouthLink has defined itself as a service for Auroville, working with a large number of mentors to create a link with units, services and working groups. The team has also helped young adults find contacts for life coaching or career counselling, and has organised community social events to bring together different generations. For, ultimately, human unity is to be worked on by all people, at all levels and ages, giving their time and energy to Auroville.

The YouthLink help desk offers immediate and in person assistance, providing information on educational and professional opportunities, such as workshops, exchange programmes, internships and job placements. The goal was to achieve youth integration through education and vocational training programmes in several topics applicable to various contexts (Auroville governance and functioning, hands-on training and work experience, and learning other life skills, such as setting up a project or non-violent communication (NVC), facilitated and held by YouthLink). This unified space held by YouthLink of activities and programmes set up for and with the youth provides them with a solid support system that is comfortable, reliable and open, giving them the courage and motivation to find interests that they would like to pursue. Some of the educational workshops and programmes developed over the years have been Community, Auroville Peer Education Training(APET), and other pro-skills courses.

YouthLink has also provided support to youth projects through project incubation, offering mentorship and helping the youth deal with various aspects of their project, from development and networking to accounting and management. Eventually those projects “graduated” and became autonomous. Some of the initiatives under the Project Nursery include Joy Of Impermanence, PTDC 2, Pakka Box, Jamu, Griham and Indi Motors.

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The current headquarters can be found in a tiny cave-like bunker right under Le Morgan Café, in the administrative area of the Town Hall. The new team is composed of Aishwarya, Anand, Ankita, Lucrezia, Tanisha, Tenzin and other part-time volunteers.

This team started to take form in June 2020; no workshops have been held due to pandemic regulations, preventing the team from organising public or group events. This period has, however, allowed them to ease into this new role and together define the direction they want to go. The main objective is the same as for the previous team: a focus on youth integration and succession planning, as well as engaging youth in topics of governance and decision-making.

In view of this, YouthLink, with help from youth in the community, has set up the Youth Network to relay information quickly to a wide platform of interested youth and to initiate discussions around various topics. As it happens, quite a few young adults are feeling the call to get involved with the current communal topic of concern, the Crown, and this momentum has transformed the Youth Network into a vibrant platform. Indeed, YouthLink has actively participated in numerous meetings, organising and facilitating several themselves. The purpose of these events is to collect and compile ideas and aspirations from the wider community of youth in Auroville. One such meeting happened at the Youth Centre on September 6th and was attended by 50+ individuals, compromising young adults of Auroville, Volunteers, Newcomers and aspiring Aurovilians.

For our youth, it is important to learn about and participate in developments within Auroville. Over the past few years, there has been a steep decline in community participation, especially with regard to governance, and the youth is not immune to this. This phenomenon of uninterest is actually occurring worldwide, but perhaps is even more visible here in Auroville. As from time immemorial, the young learn from adults around them, and they’re shocked to discover that many adults don’t know how things work in Auroville, or even express an interest in finding out.

Nonetheless, like youth all over the world today, Auroville’s youth is determined to make the past right, while accepting the gifts of the present, and being mindful of the future of Auroville. They feel our community needs to learn to mindfully leverage available technology to ease Auroville processes, like having digital data archives, centralising information, such as food production or employment opportunities, on digital platforms for ease of access, etc. In fact, it seems that the need to “freshen things up” spans all topics, areas and activities; but it takes time, commitment and dedicated teams.

One possible outcome of this involvement in Auroville governance and current affairs could be, for example, to have one youth representative per working group or service, creating a direct link with governance bodies and other decision-making groups.

Upcoming projects and workshops will be closely linked to the research that YouthLink is doing now on community life, education and work. Education and training is evidently at the forefront of the youth’s mind, and it needs to be adapted to current needs with regard to important aspects such as sustainability, ecology and NVC.

Unfortunately, there are not many higher education programmes and training options for young adults here, so they often find themselves obliged to leave Auroville to pursue their studies. Consequently, YouthLink is developing “Proskills v2.0”, a 40-hour course which will hopefully be offered by June 2022, consisting of various workshops on important topics, with a clear focus on employability.

The youth is often stressed and neglect their living conditions because they need a source of income as well as to concentrate on their studies. Therefore, YouthLink wants to create an additional support system under the larger “Prosperity” umbrella to help young adults find concrete solutions, like apprenticeships or studies, workspace, housing, and food. To do that, they are looking into various possible collaborations for incubating youth project proposals, perhaps with initiatives offering mentoring, help and support for start-up projects.

An important aim is to involve all the youth, not only Auroville youth, because opening up to the “outside” world will only add to the richness of this experiment. Projects are already under way to try and form a bridge between Auroville and the bioregion, between work opportunities here and youth who want to work. One serious blockage is the language barrier, which is a serious element that YouthLink aims to look at soon.

As had already been discussed several years back (i.e. the Hive project from 2018 that was subsequently dropped), they have restarted the project of creating a Youth Headquarters. Indeed, having a suitable workspace to be able to organise and host various activities, meetings and courses, would certainly help YouthLink become a buzzing hub rich in people, projects and energy.