Career Counselling through involvement of parents and

students.

UDAAN

OB Project

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Initial Idea
The aim of the project was to understand the aspirations of the children in the lowest economic strata and
to collate it with those belonging to the weaker sections but are relatively well off than the former. The
objective that we had in mind was to go an underdeveloped village and a school so as to have a check on
the ground reality and understand the grass root problems and in what way we could help as management
students. We wanted the children to realize their full potential and make an informed decision with respect
to their future aspirations and career paths.
In order to achieve our objective, we had to interact with parents and those who have a strong influence
on them, as they were the ones who shape them and play a pivotal role in deciding their future. We
needed to understand the problems the parents faced in providing their children a bright future, as the
problems faced were rarely straightforward but were often borne from complex socioeconomic realities.
The idea was to understand the problems and do an in depth analysis so to come up with ways to ensure
that there is synergy between parents and their children. We wanted to analyse the points of contradiction
between the parents and their child, and ensure that parents make an informed decision as the stakes were
too high.
The ultimate objective that we had in mind was to have a cascading effect such that the parents
recognized the boundless opportunities that their children can grasp upon and ensure that they do well in
their lives and in the long run, and when parents retrospect on this decision, there is a sense of pride and
accomplishment. The cascading would come when they would impart the same knowledge to their peers,
so that the society can grow as a whole.
Although our objectives seems utopian and far-fetched, our intentions were to provide the initial spark
and to give back to the society that has given us so much. However as explained in the pages that follow,
our interaction with the faculties gave us a practical structure to our entire initiative so as to improve upon
our shortcomings and hence channel our resources in a better way.

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Why we chose this idea
The parameters for choosing the group project idea were two fold- firstly, to choose something which
would have a positive impact on the lives of the people we engage, and secondly, something which would
teach us lessons of teamwork, planning and execution.

The group began to discuss the various possible sectors which we could work in, but soon we
unanimously narrowed down to education. As students of XLRI, each one of us knows the value of
quality education, and therefore we decided to analyse and brainstorm ways of improving the standard of
education in Jamshedpur.

Thereafter, specifics were discussed. Since there are a multitude of ways to improve the standards of
education, we needed to narrow our focus. After some amount of discussion, we finalised our objective to provide career counselling to the parents and if needed, high school students of Jamshedpur.

We had multiple reasons for finalizing educational counselling as the focus of our project. Firstly, we as a
group agreed upon the importance of proper guidance and encouragement during such a crucial time in a
student's career. Even more importantly, by our exposure to rural Jharkhand during our respective village
trips, we realized the importance of education. It was in this respect that we wanted to make a difference.

We decided to include both parents and students into our project. Since parents play an important role in
the direction a student's career can take, parents were an integral part of the project. The final shape of the
project had begun to form. We eventually agreed to counsel and understand the problems of both parents
and high school students, analyze the problems and collect data as a team, and finally come up with
solutions

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Problems with the idea and modification
The idea chosen was continuously modified as the project progressed and numerous changes were made
in the approach since the ground reality was very different from what was perceived. A lot of challenge
were faced by the group while executing the plans made on paper as in the field it was a different
ballgame altogether. Some of the problems and changes made were:

1. The idea was to interact directly with the people to get their insights but due to language barrier
and the reluctance of people to talk it became difficult. Thus some specific people who knew
Hindi and were open to speak were made the channel of communication
2. It was decided that to get unbiased answers from the students to not to inform them about the aim
of the data collection process which included a quiz but it was realized they would answer
honestly only if it was made clear to them that the quiz was just for research paper and it is not a
part of their curriculum.
3. Earlier it was decided that a sample size of 30 would be enough to capture the scenario but later it
was realized that the number is too less and may result in sampling error so the authorities of the
school had to be convinced to allow to take the quiz for 360 students of 8th, 9th and 10th
standards
4. The old plan was to interact with parents of the students by visiting their homes but they were
skeptical and it was not possible to get much information from them and counsel them. So, they
were instead approached through school on parent teacher meet day and they were much open to
share their views and interact with the group.

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Preparation
The success of a project depends more on the preparation and ground work than execution. The idea was
to use the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust model of iterative planning. The first model involved 5 simple steps, 1)
Define Objective 2) Identify Target Group 3) General Survey 4) Comprehensive Survey and 5) Analysis
& Pitching.
The above model was excellent on paper but led to issues in implementation. The lack of interest from
inhabitants of Beldigram to open up to unknown faces, sample space insufficiency and dearth of honest
responses. The issues were settled by going back to the drawing board to chalk out a comprehensive plan
after taking into account all possible scenarios. The following was the reiterated plan of action.
The target group was expanded from parents of Beldigram to include teachers and parents of students in
ADL Sunshine School. Two separate questionnaires were prepared for the two separate groups. It had
been observed that getting honest replies to direct questions was difficult. Thus a set of proxy questions
were designed to make the responses genuine. The team members were divided according to virtues to
extract maximum performance from individuals. Different groups took lead in functional roles like
Implementation in Beldigram, implementation in ADL School, data analysis, public relations and
questionnaire design. A stage of pilot interview was introduced after the primary interaction. The pilot
interview gave more clarity to the ground word. The goal oriented implementation was envisaged to be a
three step process. The steps have been covered in detail in the latter part of the report.
The second iteration of the comprehensive plan was a major improvement over the raw plan. However
some kinks still needed to be ironed out and they were done in the final iteration. The counselling planned
only accounted for interest and not for academic ability. As a result questions were added to measure
basic competency. Thus counselling session could be on a higher qualitative plane. It was designed to
include academic direction along with career strategies. Thus a water-tight plan was secured.

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Implementation (Phase 1):
Phase 1 implementation of the project was aimed at counseling parents from the lowest economic strata
of the society. The rationale behind this was that parents from this section tend to be illiterate which leads
them to not being able to guide or direct their children in choices related to their education or career. This
led us to select a Basti where the residents are daily wage laborers and earn Rs.100-200 per month. The
initial plan was to speak with them, understand how they think about their childrens education, analyze
the data obtained from them and try to come up with feasible plans which explain the importance of
education for their children and what steps to follow if their child is interested in a particular field.
Challenges Faced:
1) Language Barrier: The local language here is Ho and not Hindi which is unknown to any of us.
This led us to not being able to communicate with them easily. This challenge was overcome by
befriending the son of Mukhya. His name is Vishal Khessa; he is of the same age as us. He
acted as a point of contact for us in the Basti and let us speak with some families. Whenever a
problem was encountered with language, it was resolved by him.
2) Inhibitions to talk: The Basti people were extremely reluctant to speak anything with us.
Especially the women shied away as soon as they saw a group of 10 boys coming towards them.
This was overcome by approaching an old lady who runs a Pan shop. We explained her who we
are and what we intended to do and then let her take us to remaining women who then gave us
information about their childrens education and answered our questions.
Learnings: This section of the society thinks of education as a non-value addition. They believe that
education is not necessary when their child is anyway going to end up as a daily wage laborer. They are
not even open to the idea of educating their children beyond primary level of education.

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Implementation (Phase 2):

Phase 2 of the implementation of the project focused on the other strata of the society. The student
community belonging to slightly better economic background and who are registered in schools. The
rationale behind this was that their parents would be having some basic idea about the need of education
and had enough resources to enroll their wards in a low-cost college. This led resulted in selecting ADL
School which is located in Sakchi. The initial plan was to interact with some of these students but later we
were able to persuade the principle and got to interact with 367 of them. Having done that, a
questionnaire was distributed to these students which comprised of few general knowledge questions, a
few mathematical questions and questions related to what they want to achieve and are they aware of
what is to be studied to do so. The students were of class 9 th and 10th and the rationale behind this was that
they are in a position where they should be aware of the path needed to be taken and also it gives us an
idea about how their parents thought process is. But to our dismay, most of them did not know about it.

Findings:
1. Most of the students wanted to become engineers, doctors and civil servants but surely lacked the
path know-how. Many of them wrote that they want to become these things but want to study
only 12th. Similar was the case of those who wanted to become singers, painters, musicians, etc.
2. Lack of mathematical knowledge: Majority of the students got the mathematics problem which
was of the level of class 7 wrong. This shows clearly that they are not on the right track.
Learnings: The clear understanding here was that they lacked the right direction, the right amount of
guidance and the right counselling. This also reflects on the kind of guidance they are getting at school
and more importantly at home making my project of guiding and counselling the parents even more
crucial.

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Implementation (Phase 3):
The first part of Phase 3 of the implementation was aimed at counselling the students of ADL School.
After getting the answer sheets from the students we found that most of them wanted to become engineers
and doctors but wanted to study till 10th or 12th and only a few students wanted to go to College. Clearly,
they did not have any knowledge on career building and progression. So, we decided to explain to all the
students the level of education required for major career paths.
The second part of Phase 3 included getting to know the background, plans for their children and level of
knowledge parents had about career options. To know this we prepared a questionnaire asking questions
like what they do for a living, how much their monthly income and expenses are and what education and
career plans they have for their children.
Challenges Faced:
1) Preparing a relevant questionnaire It was difficult to decide the exact questions that can be used
to extract the maximum insights into the parents mentality.
2) Setting up the meeting Meeting the parents under one roof and convincing them to come for a
purpose that does not directly involve the school management was difficult. Luckily, a parent
teacher meet was scheduled as exams were recently concluded. We took the opportunity to meet
them.
3) Education level of parents We found that many parents, especially women, could not read and /
or write. So, we asked the questions and marked their responses ourselves.

Learnings:
Though this demographic of people was relatively well off and better educated, they too did not have such
information on career paths and progress. Also, they were too worried about their childrens current
performance to think about the long term.

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Data Analysis
After the session was conducted for the students, an excel sheet was prepared that had the details of the
students as well as answers given by the students to the questionnaire. Each group member was assigned
about 35 sheets and the data was updated in a common sheet. Answers to the dummy questions were also
entered so as to get an idea about the general knowledge and analytical level that the children have.
The results came up with some interesting facts. The primary aim of the whole exercise was to learn till
which level the students wanted to study, on the basis of which the following was observed:
1) Out of the 368 students, only 6 students wanted to study till 10 th, and another 32 wanted to study till
12th.
2) The data showed that 23 students didnt know how much they should study to become what they want
to be. For eg. Students who wanted to become doctors or engineers wanted to study till class 10 th only.
3) Collectively around 30 job titles were selected by the children in the answer to the question of what
they wanted to become when they grew up. The answers ranged from dancer, singer, and musician to
doctors, engineer and Police.
4) 217 students wanted to complete graduation in different areas like MBBS, Engineering, BA, B.Ed.
B.Com. etc, while another 81 wanted to pursue post graduate courses like MBA, MA, M.Com and even
PhD.
5) Only 17 students from a total of 125 class 10th students wanted to finish studying by 12th class.
Although the above observations point towards what these children wanted to become in the future, the
answers to the dummy questions in the questionnaire threw a startling fact: on one hand only about 1/4 th
of the students were able to answer the math problem, while on the other hand the GK questions were
answered correctly by 9 out of every 10 student.

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Results and Feedback

This project work undertaken by our group Udaan was instrumental in understanding and addressing
certain aspirational gaps amongst the student community (and their families) at large and also provided
key insights into group dynamics and functioning. Based on our analysis of data and monitoring of
behavior, we have drawn the following conclusions.
Varied aspirational patterns: The parent community, from the periphery, seems to be subjected to a
common stimulus and hence, is expected to have one collective set of objectives for their wards.
However, a cumulative effect of a lifetime of difference in their environments and situations elicits varied
behavior from different families. The 3 categories identified:
1. NON-ASPIRATIONAL: The first group consists of students and parents who are not aware of the
alternatives available to them. They are content being in their current state of education.
2. ASPIRATIONAL BUT LACK DIRECTION: This segment is aware of the alternate standards of
living available to them and see education as a necessity to get nearer to it. The discontent or
enthusiasm manifests itself in the form of pursuit of education. However, they have the will, they
clearly lack direction and need significant external agents.
3. ASPIRATIONAL WITH DIRECTION : The third group belongs to students and parents
who are either in a transition stage or have achieved the threshold level of success and strive for
further progress.
CONCLUSION: It can be seen that of all the three segments, it is the second group which has been and
will be receptive to our groups efforts. Udaans aim of counselling both students and parents of
alternatives available and the requisite course of action is in nexus with this segments demands for
external help as seen from the feedback received from the parents of students of ADL Sunshine School.

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Lessons Learnt
The significant lessons learnt during the course of this project include but are not limited to:
Problems of underprivileged sections: Through this project the team members could sensitize to
educational problems of the lower class of the society. While many members have already interacted at
this level earlier, this was a systematic study that delved deeper into the problem. Since there was a need
to make the maximum impact there was an immediate pressure on the team to put in their best efforts.
Continuous Amendment of Strategy: While we realized that planning a strategy makes working
systematic, we concluded that during the activity there was a need to make many tactical decisions and
operational changes to our initial strategy based on challenges faced in real-time.
The best example was trying to communicate with the members of the village. To understand the nuances
of collecting information and intricacies of communication with parents we had to modify our original
plan and conduct studies on the students and parents of ADL School.
Group Dynamics: There was a lot of discord between the team mates in the beginning of the projects
because of divergent beliefs, motives and attitudes. The first and foremost efforts to coordinate the
thinking process into a streamlined unit flow.
The next step was to identify the team members core strengths and skills to delegate work. Based on
these strengths the different functions such as communication, analysis, and strategizing was handled by
different team mates.
Finally, compiling the deliverables and coordinating the schedules and activities of the members was a
heuristic experience in managing teams of medium size.

Part B
Initial Plan to start with:

Define Objective

Identify Target
Locality
General Survey
(Patents &
Guardians)
Comprehensive
Survey (Data
Collection)
Data Sorting &
Analysis
Offer Alternatives
& Pitch them

Feedback

After the analysis, we changed our plan of action as mentioned in the report. The same is shown
below: