Interns are tackling Personality Development

This past week two interns, Stephanie and Akshay (hailing from the U.S. and BITS Pilani!) took on the first of multiple Personality Development modules for BEI’s (Bagar Employment Institute’s) Spoken English Course. They are both working on a website for Bagar and a career handbook for secondary school students respectively, and the personality development modules are a side project that give them the opportunity to interact with the community on a regular basis in an in-depth manner.
Stephanie and Akshay began the Personality Development component of the class with a module on future plans and careers. Stephanie ran the first part of the lesson, getting students to think about their interests and skills. This set the stage for a discussion and information dissemination session by Akshay on the different career opportunities that exist in India, what positions are available within a particular field, and how to go about pursuing such opportunities.

It being the first time Stephanie and Akshay were teaching, they didn’t know whether the students would find the content interesting or relevant. To their pleasant surprise however, they were flooded with questions from which they learned what kind of career fields are most popular and where students’ interests lie.

Because we’ve identified that there is an obvious information asymmetry re: future job opportunities for rural youth, this session was supremely important. In the coming weeks as Stephanie and Akshay will continue to create and deliver the Personality Development lessons, they will play a critical role in providing the students the information and skills they need to advance in an increasingly competitive world.