Adolescence is fraught with challenges for teenagers. It involves the transition from childhood to adulthood, and all the physical and emotional changes that come with it.
The Viva Flourish sessions are designed to equip children (10 to 18 years) with skills that will enable them to flourish in life.
About Flourish
The Viva Flourish programme emphasizes life skills that facilitate teenagers to effectively manage everyday problems. It focuses on self-esteem, peer pressure, goal setting, self-learning, creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and communication, as well as personal and social responsibility. It helps teenagers channel their energy positively and grow into socially and emotionally responsible adults.
To implement the programme, Viva team trains school counsellors to counsel teens . The programme begins with a ‘Social Emotional Competencies and Safety Assessment’ (SECASA) of children. SECASA informs the counsellor about the social-emotional status of the children.
Then over a period of 8 months the counsellor does 17 Flourish sessions with the children on building self-confidence, developing life goals, dealing with peer pressure, personal and online safety, keep on learning and growing, and on being a positive influence. At the end of Flourish session SECASA for the child is done again to record the social emotional learning by the child.
Counselling Teens to Flourish in Life
Mukund (a counsellor) told us about Meena, a youth, who was in a relationship with a boy. Meena’s parents were furious with her when they found out about her relationship. To set things right with Meena, they arranged her marriage within a month.
In the Flourish session about love, dating and friendship, Meena could relate her situation to the topic and informed Mukund about it. Mukund counselled her and told her that this was not the end of life for her, if only she changed her attitude, her situation would improve. After a few counselling sessions Meena realised that this was her infatuation and not true love. This realisation made her end the relationship and her attitude towards her family improved. Meena’s parents noted the change in her and did not want to push their daughter into marriage. The marriage was called off.
Meena's parents had barred her from stepping out of the house alone and had stopped her from attending college. But with seeing the change in Meena, they re-admitted her into college. She completed her college and life improved significantly for her with new opportunities coming her way.