Knowledge Professionals
 

KNOPRO: Problem Statement, Intervention and Targeted Outcome

Problem Statement

Directionless and unemployable large youth population, and squandered retired seasoned professionals’ knowledge-ware
  1. Significantly growing population of directionless/clueless/confused, unemployable youth – and specifically village youth
  2. Lack of avenues/resources in the villages for counselling/mentoring rural youth
  3. Loss/wastage of enormous knowledge base of retired seasoned persons, at a critical juncture when the country can do with every possible supporting hand
  4. Mostly meaningless retired life
  5. Very few alternatives to gainfully/meaningfully engage retired professionals without inconveniencing them

Intervention

Develop a platform to connect retired (or in-service) seasoned professionals to rural youth for career counselling/mentoring

Enable well-structured/well-documented/well-organized (not extempore) “live/interactive” discourse by the professional with the rural youth on specific areas of interests/engagement

Enable infrastructure at rural end for distance engagement (through Skype/Google Hangout etc.)

Tag mentors to mentee for involved engagement of both parties

Evaluate progress periodically

(e.g. a retired/in-service Colonel, guides/mentors village youth on what he can do to improve his chances for selection in the army – in live interactive discourse, and follows it up with regular periodic engagement)

Targeted Outcome

Year 1:
Develop and launch KNOPRO platform:
  • for sign-up and build-up of retired professionals network
  • repository for discourses with the youth
Survey rural youth on areas of their interest

Sign-up mentors for specific areas of interest
  • engage Elder care organizations for enlisting professionals
  • Social media professional platforms for word of mouth publicity for retired or in-service professionals
Develop boiler-plates for structured engagement and handhold mentors for development of content

Enable infra at rural end (Laptop, Broadband connection, Skype/Google Hangout) and at professional’s end (if needed)

Enable mentor-mentee sign-up

Develop periodic mentoring mechanisms

Develop progress evaluation mechanisms Launch the program in 2 villages. Target 25% village youth “productively” mentored

Year 2:
Launch the program in all 6 villages. Target 50% village youth productively mentored

Year 3:
Target 100% youth in adopted villages productively mentored

Scale it beyond our adopted villages through various NGOs/CSRs engaged in rural education