Outreach

ICTRC’s Project Paradigm is a series of education conferences engaging more than 5000 schools from Indian and abroad. Project Paradigm is India’s Largest School Outreach Initiative which is in continuous operation for nearly 30 years.

The pressures of urban living can be very demanding for children and adolescents alike. They are confronted with the new age of information, communication, and entertainment. The electronic media is setting new norms of lifestyle. Materialistic culture has assumed monstrous proportions. All these put tremendous pressure on these youngsters. In this Scenario, the schools will have to play a very proactive role in guiding our children. The school principal plays a pivotal role in establishing school effectiveness, quality, and a healthy institutional climate. They face the difficult task of cultivating productive relationships in a diverse environment fraught with conflicts and rigid hierarchies. They need to foster an institutional climate that is challenging while also encouraging development, ensuring continual academic and social growth. The objective of this summit is to equip the school principals with knowledge, skills, and attitudes which are simple to adopt in everyday practice and easily transferable to teachers, students, and parents.

Guidance and Counselling services have been accepted as an integral part of the total education process in India. The role of the school counsellor has become very important in the life of teenagers in today’s complex world. In all spheres of life, the adolescence needs guidance and support. They need information and guidance to make the right decision about their career, they also need someone to talk to in moments of disappointments and emotional disturbances. Parents and relatives have neither the time nor expertise to help them. Therefore, the school counsellor is their only friend, philosopher, and guide. In this scenario, the school counsellors and Teacher-counsellors (Teachers who carry out certain functions of counsellor) have to play a very proactive role in helping the adolescents. For this, they have to equip themselves with the latest developments in the field of counselling. The objective of this convention is to bring together counsellors and Teacher-Counsellors in an effort to empower them so that they are able to fulfil their noble responsibility.

India and the world at large are transition through a tumultuous time. India is leading the world in fighting back and restoring societal and economic normalcy. The new generation of professionals and skilled workers need to take the reins and guide the country in its effort to build back better and set examples anew for the world to see. Higher education is going to play a vital role in this process. In recent years the higher education landscape of the country has undergone rapid changes. Recognizing and managing these changes is vital for the successful career development of our youth. It is no longer a sequestered world with cut-and-dried professions and conformist social patterns. With the bombardment of information from all sides, youngsters are faced with the task of making difficult choices while planning for their higher education. The objective of Symposia for Senior School Students is to provide a platform for the students to interact with experts from diverse fields, eminent career counsellors, leading institutions of higher education and industry, so that they are able to make a well-informed choice.

One of the most vexing problems of the education system today is the yawing chasm between curriculum taught by the educational institutions and the skills required by the industry. This leads to students spending long years in academic pursuit and still being unable to find suitable vocations. The industry on the other hand has to spend millions of dollars in training and onboarding new recruits to bring them up to speed with the demands of the industry. The objective of this conclave is to bring schools, teacher training institutes, higher education institutions, and leading organizations from various sectors on a common platform where they can interact and understand respective positions and come to terms with the concerted efforts required to bridge the knowledge gap.

The second decade of the 21st Century is proving to be a challenging one for children. They are faced with a broad range of adversities placing them at risk of emotional and academic problems. School children are engaging in high-risk behaviours. The modern nuclear household typically consisting of both working parents hardly allows for any time with children. All these put tremendous pressure on youngsters and they feel helpless, hopeless and emotionally drained. This situation directly affects their academic performance. In addition to this, due to distorted interpretations of the so-called messages from movies, many students have come to believe that there is no need for academic rigor any more. This assumption is further de-motivating them. This is adversely affecting their work habits too. The objective of this conference is to equip school teachers with knowledge, skills and attitudes which are simple to adopt in everyday practice and easily transferrable to students and parents.

There are a number of factors that has necessitated the involvement of psychologists and other specialists to help parents understand positive parenting practices. A few decades ago, joint families were the norm, and new parents had the wisdom of generations to guide them in their parenting efforts. With the disintegration of joint families into nuclear families, parents have lost this essential support system. When most people resided in villages, the whole community was involved in raising kids. Everyone knew each other in the village and thus the kids were always under the supervision of known and trusted adults. This is no longer the case. The rapid development in technology has led to a number of drastic changes in a short span of time. The short period in which these changes have taken place means that the human brain has had little time to evolve and adapt. This drastically changes the requirements and best-practices to raise healthy children. Parents unarguably have the best interest of the child at heart; however, they may end up using questionable methods due to a lack of knowledge. The objective of this seminar is to help parents navigate the changing paradigm and raise emotionally healthy children.