Objective: Nurture underprivileged children to bloom with life skills over an extended period of time
(We plant saplings and water them to take root so that it spreads to become a forest to sustain their own communities)
FLYTE' stands for 'Financial literacy & Life skills for Youth through Training and Empowerment'. This is a program to enhance the knowledge on financial literacy along with life skills. Research indicates that those that live in poverty do so due to lack of knowledge about financial literacy, hence the objective of this program is to break that cycle among the young individuals. This program was started in February of 2016 and we work in the chosen community for five years before moving on to building other communities.
This is how the program works:
-
Disadvantaged children from the identified schools can join in this program by opening a recurrent deposit either in a bank or in a post office for Rs. 300/- each month for five years (recurrent deposit).
-
Each month, on a predetermined day, our staff meets the students at a predetermined location.
-
Engages them in a variety of theme based life skill development activities (themes range from moral science, civic responsibilities, financial instruments and to career guidance etc) for two to three hours for sixty months. Students win lots of prizes each month. At the end of the activities, students are reimbursed Rs. 200/-
-
Students are encouraged and nurtured to become reformers to transform their homes, schools and communities by engaging them and mentoring them in solving real life challenges (for example, we encourage the children to call the childline 1098 anonymously to report any kind of child protection issues in their communities)
Currently we are serving close to 100 students in two locations (a tribal hamlet in Javvadu Hills and in Pilanthupattu Panchayat in K.V. Kuppam block of Vellore District) but we are hoping to enroll another 500 students.