“I enjoy social work through NSS, it gives me everlasting satisfaction”- Dr. Sandeep Goel, Acharya N Dev College. He has been associated with the NSS for over 8 yrs and has been part of many blood donation camps, cleanliness drives, AIDS awareness campaigns among other things.
 
“I really learnt a lot and enjoyed the field experiences – village visits, slum visits, outdoors with volunteers.” - Dr. Geeta Sahare, Laxmibai College. She has been working with NSS for almost a decade and has been part of inter-college workshops and seminars, outdoor camps, adult literacy drives, literacy programs at slum areas, health awareness and blood donation camps, etc.
 
“The sensitivity and humane approach that has grown amongst the volunteers has been a highlight.  Networking for recruiting commonwealth volunteers, as well as networking with NMML and foundation for universal peace has been a highlight.”- Dr. Amri Kaur Basra, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce. She has been actively involved with NSS for over 9 years and has assisted in projects such a recruitment of volunteers for the Commonwealth Games, conservation of natural heritage sights, AIDS awareness campaigns among other things.
 
 

 
Pravah along with NSS, Delhi University has jointly designed a pilot intervention in five selected colleges of Delhi University. The aim is to synergise Pravah’s experience and resource of knowledge, skills and expertise with ongoing NSS programmes for cadres of student volunteers for cross-fertilization of ideas, learnings and impactful youth-centric processes.
 
Pravah will work intensively with the programme coordinator, programme officers and student leaders, who are the torchbearers of the NSS programme, to create learning opportunities that will help them carry forward their responsibilities in the most effective ways. The interventions by Pravah will be strengthened and expanded through a communication and community media strategy, using the operational Community Radio Station at Delhi University (DU-CRS). Through this effort, we will co-create a model for effective leadership and active citizenship within NSS and if successful, will replicate the same in other colleges.
 
Pravah will jointly anchor the intervention with NSS for the programme officers. OneWorld is the strategic partner for seamless integration of communications and community media in the project. During the course of the intervention, OneWorld will train the participants in radio production and offer mentoring and advisory support to produce and promote the programmes, while building a bank of useful audio content for further dissemination.
 
Since the NSS programme has a shared leadership between the students and teachers, it would be worthwhile to have interventions with both these groups for improved quality and management of the programme.
 

• Interventions with the NSS student leaders: This will be our intensive engagement with the NSS student leaders from the target colleges to develop their competencies around self, skills and society. This core group of student leaders is the interface between the programme officers and the NSS volunteers and therefore it is critical to nurture them and provide them with learning opportunities to carry forward their responsibilities to the fullest.
• Building self-awareness: Our interventions will focus on building the skills of the student leaders around self –awareness .This will encourage them to go deeper into their inner self to understand their values, motivations and aspirations in relation to their work, relationships and the society at large. Finally, social issues will be put into the correct perspective through which skills and processes of arriving at stances will be elaborated.
• Leadership skills: In order to realise their leadership potential to the fullest, student leaders will be taken through skill building sessions on leadership, teambuilding, decision-making, conflict resolution and instructional design and facilitation.
• Social action: We will also work towards building and enhancing the skills and knowledge of the student leader around social justice issues.
• Communication for change: The intervention will also seek to build capacities of the participants to use the powerful medium of radio to reach and influence a much larger audience by producing and broadcasting creative and socially relevant radio programmes. These programmes, aired in partnership with the existing DU Community Radio Station, will reach out to the students of the surrounding colleges as well as the general public living and working within its catchment area.

The programme officers of NSS who will be part of this intervention are:
Dr. Amri Kaur Basra, Delhi College of Arts and Commerce
Dr. Geeta Sahare, Laxmibai College
Dr. Jayashree Sahu, Lady Shriram College
Dr. Nadira Arif, Zakir Hussain College
Dr. Nishta Bhushan, Bharti College
Dr. Ratna, Deen Dayal Upadhyay CollegeDr. Sandeep Goel, Acharya N Dev College
Dr. Vandana Chaudhary

 
 
 
Click here to read about the detailed plans of this partnership
 
About NSS
National Service Scheme (NSS) is an Indian government-sponsored programme under the Department of Youth Affairs and Sports of the Government of India. It was started in 1969 in 37 universities involving 40,000 volunteers, the scheme has grown over the years and it is implemented today with an involvement of more than 2.6 million volunteers spread over in 200 Universities, Polytechnics and +2 Systems. The efforts of NSS volunteers have been widely acclaimed by the community, universities, colleges and general public as the NSS volunteers have been rendering selfless service to the community.
 
 About OWSA
OneWorld South Asia is the South Asian centre of the international non-profit OneWorld network that aims to use the democratic potential of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) to promote sustainable development and human rights in the region.