Online Counselling & Guidance

Girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds in India don’t have access to appropriate information, support or counsel on concerns related to growing up, education, training and careers. While concerns and problems are growing through COVID, access is further limited.

With 88% households owning a mobile phone, a toll-free helpline advertised through social media relying on peer-group transmission, will reach the message of availability, at no cost, of empathetic, trained counselors and career guides with experience of working in low-income communities. Issues needing to be covered range from menstruation, sexuality, abuse, discrimination, family pressures and emotional turmoil to concerns about money, need to earn, availability of training and jobs, dreams and aspirations. Counselling and guidance will help reduce dropping out of school, increase confidence and focus, and encourage girls to achieve their potential.

This solution addresses a universal need and the solution can be scaled to impact the future of girls everywhere.

Adolescence and the transition to adulthood are difficult phases, where most need guidance. The need for counseling and guidance for adolescents is well recognized and mandated by Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) in India since 2014. However, in 2018 the Ministry of HRD, acknowledged that “that most of the schools are not providing educational and vocational counselling...…This could be one of the reasons for high drop out at Secondary level”. It is estimated that 39.4% girls between ages 15-18 drop out of school.

Moreover, availability as well as usage of professional counselling outside schools is very limited. Use of counselling services by girls at the lower socioeconomic level is further restricted due to social inhibitions, accessibility and affordability.

Problems of dealing with prejudices and negative experiences in a tradition-bound, patriarchal society are compounded by difficult living conditions and scarcities. Adolescent and young women struggling with confusion, anxiety, fear, helplessness, shame and anger have nowhere to go. Living with low self-esteem, it is easy to submit to pressure and take the line of least resistance. Dropping out of school and remaining unskilled, leaves them vulnerable to pressures for early marriage, early and frequent pregnancies, lifelong financial dependence and domestic violence.

A Preventive (rather than Remedial) toll-free Helpline managed by trained and compassionate counselors familiar with the sociocultural context of potential callers, supported by an integrated CRM process, a library of reference material, and, a network of specialists has been designed to provide girls with access to authentic information, help to resolve concerns and problems, and, connect with relevant professionals in case medical interventions are needed.

The multi-channel helpline, with an Interactive Voice Recording system will allow the caller to connect to a chosen counselor, who will have access to the full history of previous calls allowing the counseling and the problem resolution process to evolve to a satisfactory conclusion.

Data confidentiality and security will be maintained through strict enforcement of security policies within ETASHA and in the collaborating organizations. Counselors having appropriate professional qualifications will be further trained and mentored through ETASHA’s existing programs running with adolescents and youth from low income communities.

The helpline will provide a listening post which can be accessed without cost, shame, obligation and fear of ridicule or exploitation. It will obviate these barriers and provide information, support and counsel through systematic processes of problem resolution, and guidance for education, training and careers. 

The Helpline is designed to serve young girls from low socioeconomic backgrounds, who are typically from families of daily wage laborers, pavement vendors or small shopkeepers who have migrated from villages or small towns in search of work. They are typically first-generation high school-goers who have benefitted from the Government’s policy of free schooling for girls. They struggle with the tradition-bound views of parents, an inadequate school-system, largely apathetic teachers, as well as their own aspirations fanned by exposure to a different world mainly through TV and urban life.

The Helpline will be manned by professionally trained counsellors, who would be further trained through extensive exposure to the living realities of this segment, through ETASHA’s on-going programs in Government Girls’ schools in low-income communities, as well as with young girls from the same segment in our Job-linked Vocational Training Programs. This training would help the Counselors cross the class divide which plagues our society.

The counselors would thus be well equipped to put the girls at ease, build rapport with them and help evolve solutions that the girls can implement in their lives, instead of dropping-out of education, careers or even life.  

The Helpline providing Online Counselling & Guidance will work to ‘Increase the number of girls and young women participating in formal and informal learning and training’.

We will reach out announcing the helpline through the existing contact base of students, parents and teachers from past and ongoing school and vocational training programs through phones, social media, website and pamphlet distribution. Peer transmission will be encouraged. The network of NGOs working in such communities will be energized.

The zero-cost, social barriers-free channel, and positive experience of being heard with compassion will encourage girls to open up, explore solutions and resolve problems.