FAQs
1. What is the Commutiny Learning and Leadership Support Programme?
The Commutiny Learning and Leadership Journey is a year-long programme offered by COMMUTINY - THE YOUTH COLLECTIVE to provide young people opportunities for intensive personal learning and reflection combined with an opportunity to lead an independent social change experiment.
As a participant of the LLJ, (we call them Commutineers!), you will be supported to strengthen your passion for creating a better world, undergo personal transformation and lead social change through community engagement. You will gain opportunities to work closely with other young change-leaders and be navigated by experienced professionals in the social sector and other fields. You will have open spaces for learning interactions among participants and play a part in co creating collective spaces that make the journey more meaningful, relevant and sustainable. You will also receive year-long financial support (between September 2010 and August 2011).
CYC invites young people from across the country to apply for the Learning and Leadership Journey
2. What is The Youth Collective?
COMMUTINY - THE YOUTH COLLECTIVE is a group of progressive and like minded individuals/organisations who have a passion and belief in the power of young people to bring about social change. As a group we wish to encourage, strengthen, visibilise and applaud young people’s questioning and exploration of the complex issues in the human and natural worlds, and their actions to bring about a positive change.
For this, we are working at
creating a common platform for youth development and youth action
creating a positive image about youth citizenship action
developing a bridge between policy makers and influencers to strengthen youth programmes
bringing more organisations towards youth development
The Founder Members of The Youth Collective are:
Amrita Patwardhan, Sir Ratan Tata Trust (Mumbai)
Dr. Anita Patil Deshmukh, PUKAR (Mumbai)
Arjun Shekhar, Pravah (New Delhi)
Ashraf Patel, Pravah (New Delhi)
Durba Ghose, Pravah ( New Delhi)
Fr. Jerry Thomas, Don Bosco Social Work College ( Jorhat)
Gagan Sethi, Jan Vikas (Ahmedabad)
Meenu Venkateswaran, Pravah (New Delhi)
Nayan Patel, Yuvshakti – Janvikas (Ahmedabad)
Dr. Ram Narayan Syag, Samavesh (Bhopal)
Ravi Gulati, Manzil, ( New Delhi)
Rustam Vania, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology(Bangalore)
Sonam Wangchuk, SECMOL,( Ladakh)
Vartika Jaini, Sir Ratan Tata Trust (Mumbai)
3. Can you explain what you mean by "FULL TIME" engagement?
If you read the programme information and process (www.commutiny.in), you will realize that the programme has a strong component of self led learning where you havew opportunity to explore multiple learning avenues and methodologies for personal growth and development and planning & undertaking a social change experiment. This includes young people coming together to share and learn from each other's experiences. Given the intensive nature of this engagement , we expect Youth participants to devote a minimum of 1 year full time to this entire process.
Based on your experiences in the 1 year Journey if you choose to engage long term with your social change initiative CYC would be happy to partner in it in various ways based on mutual agreement.
4. I would like to study along with my Learning and Leadership Journey. Will this be possible?
We would encourage you to continue your academic programmes - provided they are not full time in nature and can be realistically engaged, along with your full time LLJ.
5. Can people outside of India apply for this? If an applicant is selected, for how long should he/she be expected to stay in India? Is it for the entire duration? Or just for the initial 3 months period?
At this point, the programme is targeted to people residing in India. Please apply if you are willing to stay in the country for a minimum of 1 year, with the possibility of extending your engagement for 2-3 years. We do not support international travel, and will not be able to make remittances outside India; Visa Formalities shall be your responsibility.
6. Please inform us about the financial support.
All Commutineers will be offered a learning grant of Rs. 25000 for the first quarter. Based on an action plan and budget developed and submitted by commutineers at the end of the first quarter, we will make a further grant for the remaining nine months. Grant amounts will vary and will be arrived at through a consultative process.
7. What is the term of engagement with the Learning and leadership Journey?
The initial term of engagement is 1 year. Commutineers graduating from the first phase may apply for LLJ phase 2.
Post first year of Journey, Commutineers with a concrete social change project initiative and commitment for long term engagement to strengthen one's own and team's leadership towards establishing, nurturing and managing change initiative can apply to LLJ Phase 2.
8. Currently it is only Hindi and English speaking youth who will get an opportunity to work with you. Can you include youth speaking other regional languages?
We are aware of this issue and have debated on the same. We assure you that at the Collective we would have loved to have kept the programme open for all young people. But we have our own limitations and as of now do not have the required language skills amongst us or the required resources to conduct multi-language processes.
However, people do not need to be excellent in these languages to apply. They just need to be able to communicate comfortably in either Hindi or English.
9. I got a mail from you regarding the COMMUTINY LEARNING AND LEADERSHIP JOURNEY. But the application form says that a minimum age criterion is 18 yrs. But I'm 17... so can I still apply?
We do not have the scope to accommodate your application. But please be in touch and log on to http://commutiny.in from time to time so that you get to know of other opportunities for yourself. COMMUTINY - THE YOUTH COLLECTIVE will also make the effort to inform you of other opportunities, as and when they arise.
