I promised another profile on social entrepreneurs I had the chance to visit while in India, so here's another: Teen Channel. There are no links to them, though supposedly they have a website. I haven't been able to find it and the link on their brochure doesn't work.

Teen Channel is a program started in Hyderabad to help out-of-school adolescents and potential dropouts from impoverished backgrounds get back into school. They've since expanded to several locations throughout India, and also in Nepal and Bangladesh. T. Aravind Kumar was our host for this visit to one Teen Channel school in Hyderabad, and has been instrumental in that expansion around the region.



The program targets teens between the ages of 13 and 21 who have not been attending school, largely because either their parents or necessity has forced them to work. One of the big problems in India is that children who do drop out to go to work, maybe thinking it will only be a little while, do not go back, or find it hard to go back since they're usually sent back to the grade in which they left.



Teen Channel tries to fill that gap by bringing these drop outs together to learn collectively. That way the "pride factor" of a 13-year old having to return to an early grade to study with 7-year olds doesn't get in the way. There are also physical, mental and emotional challenges that dropouts have to deal with that their peers may not. Plus, public schooling in India is generally quite poor as it is. Those with the money to pay for it send their children to private schools.



Teen Channel not only focuses on academics and completing their high school certification, it also teaches social, recreation and workplace readiness skills - life skills as they are often called. These issues are seen as equally important for the education of the teenagers, enabling them to become responsible citizens and on the way, growing personally and professionally and, hopefully, opening doors that looked closed for their futures.



Services provided by Teen Channel include an individual development plan, employment placement support, mentoring and entrepreneurship programs, and teaming up with alumni who have graduated from the course. My main impression coming away from this visit was that the children seemed happy to be there and very focused on their education and doing the right thing. Teen Channel also works with the students who can't give up their employment for reasons of having to help provide for their families by having staggered hours of classes throughout the school week.

If anyone wants information on how to contact Teen Channel, please let me know.

In other news, focusing on the region:

*An overview of the Indian economy over at Social Entrepreneurism.

*Razib Ahmed at South Asia Biz looks at the 1 million child laborers in Nepal and asks: How many is too many?

*Creating prosperity through ICT4D innovation to address poverty issues in rural Bangladesh, from The New Nation. Also, an editorial in the Financial Express in Bangladesh calls for social entrepreneurship for lasting impact.