Initiative to woo youths to defence a big draw

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A generation which idles away time on mobile phones or in chat rooms, how willing would they be to wrack their brains over their future? The officials of Higher Secondary and Sainik Welfare Directorates seem to have found out. Their joint initiative ‘Love India, Save Future’, an innovative project to introduce the umpteen opportunities in the field of defence services for youngsters in higher secondary schools in the state, has created much waves.Under the project, officials of the Sainik Welfare Department will address a select group of 250 boys and girls from various higher secondary schools in a district and enlighten them on the various opportunities in the uniformed profession. They are told how defence service is not just about warfare but also covers various disciplines such as engineering, medicine, technology and other professions mingling with it. And about the scores of vacancies awaiting them. According to officials, the unexpected part of the sessions have been the flood of queries from the side of girls, who seem to receive the idea with more open minds.“We have covered two districts - Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam - under the project and how the students responded! More so, the girls, who evinced more interest in the sessions and approached us for more details. Our objective was to make boys and girls realise that India’s defence sector holds magical opportunities for young minds like them. And now is the age to make the decision, says Dr S Naseeb, State Co-ordinator of the Career Guidance and Adolescent Counselling cell under HSD.The age group of 17 to 24 is the best period to think of joining defence, says K K Govindan Nair, Director of Directorate of Sainik Welfare, Kerala. “There is so much of conflict in the society over religion, against women and other things. Our effort is to help turn the attention of the young minds to better avenues. Defence is a disciplined service which makes one’s life disciplined too. We don’t expect all of them to join armed forces, but at least they will put their thoughts in that direction, Govindan Nair says.According to him, defence is not male-dominated profession as it is assumed to be. Except maybe in the fighting front, women have found their way to all male-bastions. Earlier, it was nursing field where women joined in large numbers in the armed forces. But there are many other superior posts and supporting jobs that women could take up and all this are detailed during the sessions in schools, Nair said.The project would soon make its way to other schools in the remaining districts and buoyed by the response it has received initially, the Higher Secondary Directorate has plans to take it to more girls’ schools too.