Adolescence is a special phase of life. After working with adolescents for past 25 years, RDI strongly believes that adolescents are an enormous untapped resource and potential who can perform significant role in the societal development, therefore they should be mobilized and engaged in awareness and development activities. To mark this RDI regularly offers innovative and creative activities through which adolescents’ engagement can be made effective and purposeful for them.
This summer RDI has conducted 4 workshops with 10 more to come in which adolescents from 6 blocks of Uttarakhand—Doiwala, Narendranagar, Vikasnagar, Kalsi, Chamba and Bahadarabad are engaged. In May 103 adolescents, 44 boys and 59 girls attended the workshop. Objective of these summer workshops is to engage adolescents in diversified activities and broadening their horizon of understanding, perspective and to build their capacities, to enable them for their improved healthcare practices and lifeskills.
Participant adolescents enjoyed learning various topics like first responder wherein they knew how to tackle accidental injuries and how to provide medical aid. They learnt to assess the health of an injured person and his level of response and to administer CPR (cardio pulmonary resuscitation). In another session of language lab they were exposed to software Wordsworth English Language. They got several tips of English language related to vocabulary, formation of sentences, and grammatical tips for communicating with people. Adolescents keenly attended session on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) which was quite informative to them. Girl adolescents liked this most and mentioned they received knowledge towards maintaining hygiene and cleanliness and were happy since their queries were settled. Similarly palliative care session enhanced their understanding towards healthcare needs and services required for persons living with cancer and their families.
Sessions on yoga, career counselling and counselling to improve their daily habits were facilitated as per the specific need of adolescents. Health checkup and counselling was facilitated for all participants.
Adolescents participated enthusiastically in each session and were happy to receive the 2-day workshop.
