Civil Society Intervention (CSI)

Behavioral transformation highlights behavioral limitations that limit individuals from seeing and capturing opportunities necessary in making conscious changes to life situations, such as incremental thinking, ingrained habits and biases, and innate fear of the unknown. This 20-week programme exposes teenagers to methods of reshaping one’s thinking towards innovation, change, and reaching their highest potential no matter their background. Weekly lessons are designed to instill positive values in youths coming from challenging homes and backgrounds with the help of counseling, sport activities and career guidance that play a major role in the effectiveness of this programme.

Low self-esteem results in non-assertive behaviour resulting in poor interpersonal relations especially during teenage years which are critical to every individual’s growth. This would be fundamental to an individual’s ability to negotiate and resolve conflicts as a lack of self-awareness and emotional intelligence becomes a big obstacle despite having excellent intelligence inherited. Lack of prioritisation in life results in unproductive behaviour and stress which directly influences his or her’s education, work and overall life balance.

This 20-week programme exposes teenagers to methods of practicing self-management, self-awareness, self-regulation, self-motivation, and empathy towards others. Each week presents a well thought out module that helps participants to better understand, use and manage their emotions which spurs a growth in one’s own emotional intelligence quotient.  With increased Emotional Intelligence, he or she are able to relate better to one’s surrounding environment, balance optimism & pessimism so they can effectively impact everyone around them.

Outdoor activities such football, netball, silambam and kabbadi were introduced to allow students to spend their time positively, stay healthy and an opportunity to unlock their talents. Professional coaches were identified and engaged to coach the students on a weekly basis. This approach inculcated discipline, sportsmanship and team work among these underprivileged students. Sports activities often act as a “pulling factor” for these students and EWRF CSI Centres are encouraged to leverage on this factor to coax the students to attend other sessions – Character Building, Talk Sessions, Mentoring, Counselling and so forth.

This component aims to instil positive values, build their self-esteem, confidence, coping skills and in a nutshell, promote personal and social growth of individual’s full human potential and thereby reduce physical, mental, emotional and social impairment which results in antisocial behaviour. Experience learning activities (ELA) that combine fun and exploration were used on during the sessions to increase self-awareness / management, social awareness, relationship management and responsible decision making. Facilitators play a key role in ensuring the “learning” takes place during these sessions.

“Mentoring is to support and encourage people to manage their own learning in order that they may maximise their potential, develop their skills, improve their performance and become the person they want to be.” Eric Parsloe, The Oxford School of Coaching & Mentoring. This explains the other “hat” worn by EWRF CSI Facilitators – Mentors.

EWRF CSI Facilitator as a mentor guides the mentee to find the right direction and who can help them to develop solutions to life / career issues. Mentors rely upon having had similar experiences to gain an empathy with the mentee and an understanding of their issues. Mentoring provides the mentee with an opportunity to think about career options and progress. It is a helpful relationship based upon mutual trust and respect.

Counseling forms an integral component of CSI by providing opportunity for young people and adults to talk, in confidence, about things that are worrying them or affecting their day to day life. By supporting the emotional health, counseling helps to make it easier for them to build healthy relationships and learn within the environment they live in. EWRF CSI Facilitators are required to identify CSI participants requiring psychosocial counseling and refer them to the counsellors. Trained & Certified Counsellors are engaged at every Branch to provide essential psychosocial support to students and their families.