Help The Youth Develop 'Emotional Wellbeing'

Here’s how your CSR funding can help can train, teach our youth how to develop emotional and psychological wellbeing and becoming self-sufficient to cope with the emotional and mental problems themselves.

Our education system has not much changed with the time and somewhere failed to address the issues that we as students face. There are so many areas (e.g.: exam-oriented culture, overrated curriculum, choice of subjects, experiential learning etc.) where we need intervention in order to reinvent our education system however my focus is on developing emotional and psychological wellbeing amongst the youth.

According to the World Health Organization, India is one of the most depressed countries in the world with a whopping 36% of Indians likely to suffer from major depression at some point in their lives. And another report by WHO in 2015 suggests that 1 out 5 Indians are depressed, which means 20% of Indians are depressed.

The reason for this depression epidemic could be many and I strongly believe that the predominant reason for this is also our inability to cope with it.

What if we can train, teach our youth how to develop emotional and psychological wellbeing and becoming self-sufficient to cope with the emotional and mental problems themselves. This could be a step forward to make this world a better place to be.

What am I doing about it?

I am taking road trips on my motorcycle reaching out to the institutions in various cities across India and conducting #emotionalwellbeing seminars and talks on the key issues our students face in their day to day life esp. related to their emotional well-being.

I will be doing 100 seminars estimated to impact nearly 40,000 students from various cities and small towns. The states I am traveling to are Delhi-NCR, UP, MP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Uttrakhand, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir and maybe more. You can track my journey on: www.connectingyouth.co.in

Why?

It all started after the incident happened in Dec. 2012, where a 2nd year engineering student committed suicide in his hostel room. And this guy was my sister’s classmate. We all were really disturbed and deeply shocked by the incident. I was even angry about it. But didn’t know what to do?

In the next week, I had a seminar scheduled at St. Mary’s Inter College in the city. The audience were the students above age 14. So, at the seminar, I decided to discuss the issues related to one’s emotions. Such as:

• How to manage their own emotional state?
• What makes them frustrated, depressed, angry, sad or even happy, loved etc. and
• How to handle negative emotions?,
• Peer pressure and Academic Pressure
• Bullying and criticism, Self-esteem issues,
• Tendency to seek validation from others, craving for social media followers Etc.

While doing it, I realized that the youth also feel empowered because now they have a little better understanding and awareness of their fears, vulnerabilities, insecurities, own psychology and most importantly now they have the ability to deal with it.

What happens when I don’t raise enough money?

You will better understand if you ever knew that you can make a difference but due to lack of resources you can’t pull this off; how that feels like?

Unfortunately, it may take years to reach out to such a humongous pool of students. Nevertheless, I won’t stop trying. I talk, walk, eat, sleep everything I do is for #ConnectingYouth. This is my ultimate priority in life at the moment.

And lot of people don’t realize the importance of emotional well-being. To create a buzz we need a movement and this is our chance to make it happen. And the money I would use to sustain the campaign for more than 4 months. The calculations made are minimalistic.

If I couldn't raise the target amount, this will hinder the reach of Connecting youth on Wheels" and the impact that we are willing to create.