Youth Workers, Led With Compassion

Many young people are struggling to integrate into the mainstream society. They have an increased tendency to become involved in antisocial and unethical activities. It is not unusual to see many young people smoking, drinking alcohol, doing drugs, involved in petty crimes and spending their time in unfruitful activities. Parents, community and the government seem very much unable to help these young people. I assume that the social stakeholders feel either helpless to help such young people or they are ignoring them.  

The Youth Centre specifically aims to reach young people who are “at risk”.  By “at risk” I mean those who don’t have good parental guidance because either their parents are divorced or informally separated or have gone overseas for work. Most of the parents/parent of these young people are not well educated; they do not have good relationships between them. There can be reasons behind such poor relationships like communication gap and intellectual or generational gap. The majority of youth in Nepal who have no good economic backgrounds, have uneducated parents, poor teacher/student and youth/parents relationships, they are unaware of risk taking behaviours and their consequences, because of lack of proper guidance, low self-esteem and unawareness. Thus these young people are vulnerable. They make or are strongly influenced to make poor choices in life resulting in greater pain, suffering and rehabilitation.   

Some of the risk taking behaviors I am talking about include but not limited to: 

• Disinterest in school/studies
• Premarital and unsafe sexual activity 
• Early marriage
• Involvement in petty crimes like stealing, bullying, violence and rebellion, use of alcohol, smoking and drug abuse  

I see that the problems of young people in Nepal are not so much a result of having many options but rather come from a lack of education and awareness. They are equally linked with the political, economic, social and spiritual conditions as well. Only a certain section of the population has too many options but having many options does not solve the problems of young people either.   

With the advent of modern technology and thus the information revolution including internet, mobile and media, especially urban young people of Nepal are exposed to the world like never before. It is an increasing challenge for all concerned as to how to guide these youth who are exposed to or have access to such facilities so that they make proper use of them and take advantage of them.   

The aim of the project is to engage such youth in a nurturing youth friendly environment, provide information, guidance and counseling in both personal and career matters, build their confidence to face life’s challenges, and give them basic job skills. We want to do this because we desire to see them have a safe, healthy, peaceful and enriched life both at family and community level.  

We invite all those who believe in the potential of young people no matter from what background they come from to join hands with us to reach out to them with hope, love and developmental opportunities.