PINAKI MAJUMDAR
Jamshedpur, Jan 14 : Tata Steel Foundation (TSF) is organising ‘Dhwani,’ a youth conclave on a virtual platform.
The conclave being organised to mark the birth anniversary celebration of Swami Vivekananda began on Wednesday.
‘Is gender-equal society a dream?’ was the topic of deliberations on the first day, which saw a good response from participants.
The chief speakers of the celebrations were youth icons Franz Gastler and Megha Bhatia. About 320 youths participated from various locations in Jharkhand and Odisha.
Gastler has been instrumental in promoting football amongst girls in and around Ranchi. He coached many of them who aspire to become eminent footballers besides pursuing their education.
Bhatia, who holds an LLM degree with specialisation in Human Rights from University College, London runs VOIX, a youth led organisation which works to prevent child sexual abuse.
Sourav Roy, chief CSR Tata Steel said, “Dhwani is a platform that facilitates shared perspectives and collective thinking on key issues affecting the youth and highlighting the unheard voices. It is a forum for bridging the gap between youth and young changemakers to motivate and inspire the youth towards bringing a positive change in society.”
The topics of discussions would further include ‘What can be the role of youth in achieving food security?’ (January 19), ‘Is “children at work” pushing the nation towards a vicious cycle of poverty? (January 26), ‘Will the actions we take today be enough to forestall the direct impacts of climate change? Or is it too little too late? (February 2) and ‘Is entrepreneurship a pathway to reduce unemployment?’ (February 9).
TSF believes in the idea of community development by strengthening the root of every community- its youth. They run various programmes that look at the holistic development of these individuals by fortifying their health, education and livelihood.
Programmes like RISHTA take care of the health of the adolescents while various skill development programmes are run by the Industrial Training Institutes in Tamar, Jagannathpur and TSTI Burmamines.
Dhwani, the youth conclave is observed every year where various thinkers, scholars across the nation come together to voice their opinions.
Apart from these programmes, TSF also supports students through various scholarship programmes which prove to be beneficial for the higher studies of the youth.
