The Functioning

The suggested functioning :

• Voluntary membership will be sought from students, faculty, staff or whoever is interested from among the institution's community. There will be no membership fee, but a token (one-time) registration fee of, say, Rs.100/- may be charged.
• These members may borrow books (say, 2 at a time) from the library.
• These members will meet at frequent intervals, say, once a week or once a fortnight. The date of these meetings may be fixed in consultation with all the members attending the meetings, as far as practicable. The teacher-coordinator or a student-assistant coordinator should also inform all the members.
• The members may form an email group for easy and effective communication.
• There could be reading from an inspiring book, say, Swami Vivekananda's books, for about 20 minutes, followed by discussions and interactions among the participants.
• The participants may also be encouraged to come prepared with a particular topic and present their views followed by discussions.
• Periodically, some prominent persons (say, monks of Ramakrishna Order, social service activist, eminent persons from various walks of life) may be invited for these meetings to share their views and answer the students' questions.
• Those who seek individual counselling or discussion with a senior person may be provided such opportunity. The services of trained counsellors (psychologists, psychiatrists, etc) may be requisitioned for this purpose. If needed, woman counsellors may also be inducted.
• Outreach counselling camps may be conducted by the Centre periodically in various educational institutions. This may be of two types: (i) general awareness programmes on personality development, mental health and wellbeing, stress management, time management, etc., and (ii) individual counselling session conducted by trained counsellors as may be required. Inspiring books, CDs, and other literature may be distributed to the students during these sessions.
• The Centre may also consider some training courses for prospective counsellors, preferably, from among the teacher education trainees and teacher educators.
• Proper documentation of the activities of the Centre, including the individual counselling sessions, should be maintained. These should contain, among other things, the number of students benefited with details of their names, gender, age, counsellor, etc., the names of participant students in interactive sessions, the names of faculty, etc.
• Periodical feedbacks (say, once in three months) should be taken from all the stakeholders.
• The functioning of the Centre may be reviewed periodically and suggestions invited from all concerned for its improvement.

The logistics needed :

The institution in which the Vivekananda Centre for Youth Counselling will be established should provide the following:

• A separate room for discussions, meetings, interactions similar to a seminar room in which some 25-30 persons may be accommodated.
• Some almirahs for keeping inspiring books on value education, lives and teachings of great men, etc. (A set of books, say about 1000 books, on and by Swami Vivekananda, Sri Ramakrishna, etc will be donated by Ramakrishna Mission to form the core of this library).
• One or two coordinators among the monks, faculty, etc. who will look after the Centre's functioning. There could be one or two assistant coordinators from the student memebrs.

Financial support available :

Each Centre will be supported to the tune of Rs.10 lakh over the next 20 months, on receipt of a projected budget from the Centre.