Many educated youth in the villages are insecure about their future and their environment. They hardly have any perspective and are used as cannon fodder by fundamentalists of all sorts. They join gangs, and factional politics in the villages. Because of the poor education that they receive they neither fit in with the agriculture operations that their parents have been involved in nor are they educated enough to join the industrial or service society that has now begun to grow in and around the cities.

They are not organised and are not aware of the different developmental initiatives of the Government. They are also not aware of the potential they have in steering the developmental initiatives for their villages or in dealing with the many social issues seen in the villages.

Since 1998/1999 the Collective has been working with the educated Youth of this area. No other organisation working in this area has focused on youth.

In this context, the objective of the Yuvatha programme is to organise, motivate, orient and create awareness on the contemporary issues, the rural youth so that they will stay in the villages, inculcate new values, develop leadership skills, better their existing skills, participate in the development activities of their villages, in time get away from faction politics and work for social change.

The main objectives of this project are :

• To build awareness among the rural youth of Anantapur district regarding the major social issues, through orientation trainings; à To unionise the rural youth;
• To identify and nurture their skills and efficiency in cultural art forms; à To increase their participation in decision making;
• To build leadership qualities among the rural youth;
• To mobilise rural youth to take up activities to answer social problems & issues;
• To encourage rural youth to adapt sustainable agriculture methods; and

To motivate youth to be a part of development programmes of the village.

Funding support for work with Youth has been received from SDC - Switzerland and Miserior - Germany through LAYA - Visakapatanam

A workshop