On the 10th of January, FSL-India’s volunteers Linda (from Italy) and Carlota (from Spain) accompanied FSL-India’s Field Officer, Manjesh to do a session at the Sri Sharada College located at Basrur. The session, attended by 16 female final-year Bachelor of Commerce students, was focused on “Career Guidance”.

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Before the session, there was a short introduction of the facilitators, by the college’s Principal. After that, the session started with an ice-breaker/ energiser to create a congenial atmosphere. To start with, the facilitators had a brainstorming session, where they got to know the knowledge level of the students, and they deepened this with the definition of the concept of career guidance.

The main intention for the whole session was to introspect in order to have a better understanding of each person’s aptitudes, skills, interests and preferences. To do so, each activity attempted to have a different focus, from an individual to a broader perspective.

The first activity was carried out individually, and it consisted of doing a self-assessment on “Who am I? What am I?”, trying to discover each student’s values, actions, purposes and passions. They were very surprised and admitted that they had never been asked that sort of questions before. However, they took it seriously and tried to reflect individually about their own being, even asking for longer time to fulfill the activity. After a small reflection, the session moved on towards the second activity, called “Career Priorities”.

This activity was done in pairs, and everyone was given a paper with different, opposite job-related choices (such as working abroad or in India, outdoors or indoors, full-time or part- time). The main goal of the activity was to interview each other, while ranking the personal preferences. When the students discussed in pairs, they were able to see the similarities and differences between them, as well as to feel uncertain about some decisions that they were not sure of, yet. At the end, the students shared their feelings and expressed that it was nice for them to get some ideas on concrete job-related characteristics, although it was still very difficult for them to state a definitive position. In any case, the facilitators insisted on the fact that in their professional career and in personal growth, nothing is fixed, so we have to be ready to adapt and readjust to this ongoing process, and to do a continuous reflection to see if we are happy with our decisions.

After a 5-minute break, a short energiser was carried out in order to get motivated for the last big group activity of the session, called “Dream Job”. Each group received a concrete job (e.g. photographer, tailor, owner of an NGO etc) and they had to do a group discussion on which steps to follow in order to achieve this position. The goal of this activity was to boost creativity and to be able to find imaginative and concrete ways to reach an objective.

The concluding words and concepts that came from the circle were: motivation, creativity, exploration (i.e. volunteering, doing internships or being curious), believe in yourself, studies and education are a source of knowledge but not a limitation, sharing your passions with your family, and always asking yourself “why?”

The whole session was carried out very nicely and the facilitators thanked the students for their participation, interest and opinions. On the other hand, the students’ feedback was very positive, although they said that it had been difficult for them at some points, especially at the beginning.