The Apprentice Project: Non-profit focuses on developing social, emotional skills in govt school students

Explaining how the Project was founded, he said, “While working as teachers in government schools, we observed that while children go to schools, they do not know why they are coming to school and learning. That is when we realised the importance of introducing social and emotional skills, which is lacking in government schools.”

He said that middle income and high-income schools have programmes focusing on co-curricular activities, but government schools, which form the backbone of the Indian education system, are far behind in undertaking such initiatives. “Due to this gap, we are creating more and more unemployable youth because they do not have the necessary skills and were never taught how to develop them,” he said.

Gopakumar said that The Apprentice Project works within the school system and asks children to choose one elective or vertical from the project.

Under every elective, a student is given a thorough exposure that will help develop his or her social-emotional skills. This helps in developing their creativity and confidence, he said. “For example, if someone chooses visual arts, they will be told about world art and artists like Picasso as well as Indian art, like the Warli.” he said.

The Apprentice Project holds two-hour classes every Saturday during school hours where high-skilled volunteers and facilitators mobilise students in their respective electives. “We have special events wherein these children can showcase their work. We have a ‘Hackathon’ for the coding elective. On February 22, we will have our first exclusive visual art exhibition with 200 artworks made by 300 students, where they have interpreted the works of Vincent Van Gogh and Edvard Munch and created their own art pieces,” he said.

The Apprentice Project has a team of more than 200 facilitators who extensively work with 2,500 students from 19 schools in Pune and Mumbai. “After these two cities, we are looking to expand to Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Aurangabad by 2022,” said Gopakumar.