LIFE COACHING
At Mitrataa, we believe in the power of coaching – of giving the girls and women the skills, motivation and inspiration to ask the right questions and find their own answers.
We achieve this through a number of core projects:
Dream Catchers Network – Our scholarship students meet each month to network and support each other as well as to be coached in different areas, for example, the power of our personal Cheer Squads to support us through tough times, stress management, overcoming our fears, how to support a depressed friend, how to follow our dreams, presentation skills, entrepreneurs’ role in development and environmental solution finding. The student stake turns in running these meetings, giving them experience in preparing an agenda and a topic, presenting in a group and managing a meeting. In our pay-it-forward model, we encourage the girls to take these new skills out in to their communities, families and schools and share them with others.
Passion for Life – Passion for Life is a 5 module cycle “choose your own adventure” game to facilitate youth to identify their strengths and passions and match them with potential ways to earn a sustainable income while also addressing problems in their communities to be solved. It seeks to answer the question, “What if we could match each individual’s strengths and passions with a way to earn a sustainable income and address their community’s challenges at the same time?”
The program is currently an offline one but we plan to develop an online version. All of our Dream Catcher Scholars go through the program as do many of the children in our partner villages and partner schools.
The increased confidence and belief in themselves of the girls has been significant. Rather than the usual “I want to be a doctor” response, they became more confident in expressing their dreams. They were able to seek experiences and training which complements their strengths, resulting in using their strengths to overcome the challenges they faced in school.
MindBody Wellness SLC Stress Management Course – The Secondary Education Examination (SEE, previously SLC) is the set of very stressful exams at the end of class 10 in Nepal known as the Iron Gate. Less than 50% of the students pass and the pressure put on the students by their families, teachers, friends, not to mention themselves is significant. Every year, far too many young people lose hope and commit suicide as a result of these exams. This project aims to teach the students the skills to handle the stress associated with their SLC year. It covers mindfulness, physiological stress implications, nutrition, memory techniques, exercise and most importantly fun! We run workshops and provide other support in our partner schools.
