Pehchaan formerly Buniyaad engages with young girls and boys from disadvantaged communities in 13 blocks of 7 districts of Gujarat, strengthening their leadership and active citizenship by facilitating their learning and leadership journeys around social perspective, orientation of constitutional values & civic actions. Through youth-oriented work, IST also equips the youth with relevant skilling and livelihood training to enter the workforce through wage employment or self-employment, holistically equipping the youth to interface and negotiate with the state and the market.
The program aims to achieve the following:
- Developing leadership among young women and men from diverse marginalized communities that is value-based, able to live with multiple identities, and can facilitate conflict transformation among diverse youth. This will also help the youth leaders take collective action on issues affecting them and strengthen local civic spaces to make them more democratic, inclusive, and secular.
- Strengthening the livelihood security of young women and men through skilling and livelihood training for entering the workforce. For young women, the focus will be on non-traditional livelihood training. With the strengthened livelihood security and integrating the perspectives of democracy, equality, and secularism, these youth will be able to live with economic independence and remain active citizens wherever they are.
- Facilitating and supporting youth leaders in setting up community learning centers and/or youth development centers that are run and managed by them only.
- Building institutional capacity of CSOs and CBOs to build competencies and leadership within organizations to work effectively on the youth leadership and livelihoods mandate.