Advanced Youth Fellowship

Advanced Youth Fellowship

An Overview:

The Youth Fellowship Project is a knowledge practice that locates the scene of action in the minds and hands of the fellows, the students, the doers, the citizens, It is an act of decentralization, an act of proactivity and democratization that symbolizes control and empowerment of the fellows as students, scholars, activists and citizens. The Advanced Youth Fellowship programme continues PUKAR’s legacy of engaging research as a mode of civic intervention and of viewing youth, active in their own urban contexts, as producers of urban knowledge. The year-long study involves consultations with scholars from the academia as well as practitioners in the related subject matters.

One year is often not enough for the youth who come from such a wide variety of backgrounds as one finds in the youth fellowship programme to gain fulfill the objectives of those interested in more detailed and deeper inquiries. Youth fellows return to re-connect with the tenets because they enjoy the process of research and most importantly because feel they can do more. Fellows who return to do more work show a high level of motivation that needs to be nurtured and encouraged.

In the advanced stage, we introduce the fellows to formal spaces of knowledge production such as books, journals, research projects on the concerned themes. We connect them to other groups and resource persons in the field and ensure that the data they collect, the questions they ask and the analysis they do is rigrous – to the best of their individual ability. Our mode of operating is to work with groups individually even though they have opportunities for peer learning. This is important since they all have different histories, biographies and capabilities and for us it is important that this translates into a diversity of knowledge practices – each with their strength and advantages.

The major difference between the Basic Level Research Programme and the Advanced Level Research is the fact that while Youth Fellowship is a process focused programme with emphasis on field work, the Advanced Level Research emphasizes analytical study methods, intensive literature searches as well as field experiences.

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