BIS #1506 CAMPUS LIFE TO CORPORATE LIFE

CHINCHWAD, AUGUST 20, 2009: At the close of the year a workshop entitled "Campus Life to Corporate Life" was conducted for the outgoing students of Don Bosco Technical Institute, Chinchwad. The workshop was built around the belief that the youth would be moving into a different environment from what they were used to, and needed to be able to articulate and face their concerns as well as to prepare them (within the limitations of what could be done in a brief workshop) to enter this new world.
In order to facilitate greater participation the youth were divided into two groups, each of around 20 to 25 participants, and the two workshops (each of one day) were conducted primarily in Hindi and Marathi.
The workshop started with an exercise that helped the students articulate their own fears and anxieties in making this transition, and this was used as an entry point into helping them learn how to deal with some of the issues that they themselves had raised. The ability and need to think out of the box (creatively) was also stressed through exercises and instructions. Finally the necessity and importance of working in a team was taught and stressed through two different games, with a number of useful principles being thus taught to the participants. In order to ensure internalization of the lessons, the youth were asked to create small ‘nataks’ (shirt plays) to express what they gained from the sessions. This allowed the resource person Mr. Josantony Joseph to highlight and add to their understanding of the various inputs given during the workshop.
The feedback from the youth was extremely positive, with a number pointing out that the methodology of teaching through exercises rather than through lecturing was far more effective. They also suggested that kind of a workshop could profitably be conducted at an earlier stage in their training at Don Bosco Technical Institute.