Vocational skill development

YouthLink is moving its office space from Virundhu Canteen (Town Hall) to the Kailash building. As they put it, “the move comes as part of our ongoing efforts to strengthen youth engagement and collaboration in Auroville”.

The German Government set up the Weltwärts programme to allow young Germans to volunteer in a different country for 6-18 months in areas like education, health, environment, culture and human rights, in order to broaden their minds and strengthen international understanding.

The following are excerpts from volunteers' final reports after 12 months in Auroville A transformative year that still resonates Much time has passed since my Weltwärts year in 2008-09.

On 21 March, the Secretary of the Auroville Foundation called all trustees, executives, managers and accountants of all Auroville units for an urgent meeting at the Sri Aurobindo Auditorium to hear about Income Tax (IT) and General Service Tax (GST) issues.

The Auroville Youth Center has sent out a mass bulletin to all residents stating that the Youth Center is a place of learning, exploration and personal growth for youth of all kinds and ages and that it has recently started to work closely with the community, creating various workshops such as welding, woodwork, kombucha making, mushroom cultivation; with more to come.

YouthLink informed the community that it would like to create a Vocational Training Centre to provide for a safe environment where Auroville youth and youth coming to Auroville can explore and develop various skills, and contribute to positive change without the need to leave the community.

The aroma of freshly baked cakes and the joyous chatter of women learning new skills recently filled the air at AVAG. Over three days, 70 local women from nearby villages participated in an intensive training programme in making millet-based cakes and cookies, organized by Gelato Factory in collaboration with AVAG, the Auroville unit Gastronomica, and COWE (Centre of Women Entrepreneurship).

Pitchandikulam Forest has issued its 2019-2020 newsletter which includes: reflective musings on the 47-year old history of Pitchandikulam Forest; the story of a monograph on the Owls of South Asia; a report on Pitchandikulam Forest’s nursery which is responsible for the growing of around 20,000 seedlings a year to help re-establish the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest (TDEF) in Tamil Nadu; a report on the Environmental Leadership and Skill Development Programme for 350 Rural Women; the work of Pitchandikulam Forest in building water retention landscapes and the restoration of the twin lakes of Siruseri Chennai; environmental artwork for Toyota Kirloskar Motors, Bangalore, on a 25-acres ECOZONE; and creating a master plan for an Ecopark/Nature lab and teaching space for practitioners of Restoration Ecology on a piece of land near Ousteri lake.

On 18th March 2020 Deepam closed. Deepam is the day care centre in Kuilapalayam for children with special needs where I work as an occupational therapist (OT).

In its 27-year life span, the Life Education Centre has been through different phases since its establishment as a centre to meet the needs of neglected children.

The vocational training school, the Auroville Institute of Applied Technology, has now been running for over 15 years. What does it do? How successful has it been and what challenges is it facing today?

On Friday February 17th, Deepam, Auroville’s therapy centre for children with special needs, celebrated 25 years.

The Auroville Institute of Applied Technology (AIAT) is now taking admissions for one and two year vocational training courses affiliated to the Central Government National Council of Vocational Training (NCVT).

Aurevan, Suryamayi and Kavitha are part of an enthusiastic team working on developing apprenticeship and internship programmes for Auroville youth.

The doors are four meters high, each smoothly rotating on two ball bearings. The scene is the new Centre for Indian Culture at Bharat Nivas, the construction of which is in the finishing phases.