Shaping the future of Pakistan is the cause based social project which involves career counseling and guidelines to students who are ready to choose subjects for their higher studies. The reason why this project is crucial is because according to statistics approximately only 2% of Pakistani youth got privileged to get higher education in universities. The number is alarming but the much more alarming situation arrives when students end up in such degrees which are not according to their taste and thus it results in total chaos. In developed countries, students are psychologically assessed to check whether they are compatible for certain field or not. We in Pakistan, just adopt the degree because someone far away from our reach has done that degree and is earning a lot. So lack of guidance is the major cause of unemployment across country. The ambition behind our project is to create sustainable platforms for students where they can get proper guideline not only by putting all the information under one flag but also providing counselling sessions to those who are in dire need of it.
Detailed Idea:
Counseling is a broad term. In the general sense, counseling refers to the process of helping a person by providing guidance, moral support, and exploring solutions for the problems being faced. “Counseling” is usually associated with a professional helping out an individual in need. This professional is someone who understands human behavior, their personality, and knows how to give the right direction to their thoughts. This professional is a person you can reach out to in times of uncertainty, and who makes sure that your identity and problems remain confidential. The relationship between a Counselor and a student is based on a good rapport and trust. This is important while counseling, as it helps to achieve the end goal, i.e., helping the students reach the solutions to his problems. Career Counseling is a process that focuses on helping one understand one’s own self, as well as work trends, so that one can take an informed decision about career and education. Career Counseling helps manage a diverse range of problems such as low concentration levels to poor time management, trust issues with family to non-agreement between parents and children on which career to choose.
In order to understand Career Counselling a little better, let us look at its most important elements:
A Qualified Career Counsellor:
A genuine Career Counsellor is the essence of right guidance, which is why he/she is the most important element of any career counselling process. Career Counsellors are experts in psychology, which means that they should hold at least a post-graduate degree in Psychology/Applied Psychology, and/or a diploma in Counselling Psychology. Career Counsellors who give guidance for a particular field, such as engineering, management, hospitality, etc., must be experts in the concerned domain. A good Career Counsellor is a problem solver, a keen listener and observer, and has sufficient knowledge of various fields to guide you in your career decisions.
A Secure Environment
The process of career counselling involves creating a safe and secure environment, where the student feels at ease and is able to discuss his/her life and career, without any hesitation. A part of this secure environment is the assurance of confidentiality of the information shared by the student.
An Agreement of Trust and Confidence
The Career Counselling process is based on a relationship of trust and confidence between the career counsellor and student. In order to help him/her, the counsellor may sometimes talk about their emotional and developmental issues, which can be a little stressful. The student and the parent needs to place an enormous amount of faith in the Counsellor to take care of such matters.
Relevant Psychometric Assessments
Psychometric Testing (Career Assessment) is a scientific and standardized process carried out to evaluate a person’s aptitude and personality. Psychometric assessments are a Counsellor’s tools, which are used to obtain the most important information about a student’s behavior, emotional strength, interests, and skills. This information helps to facilitate on what kind of careers would be suitable for him/her.
Social benefits of Project:
All of us require career guidance at some point in our life. It helps us get insights about ourselves, our career and what we can do to improve it. Here are a few ways in which career counselling helps us:
Helps Pick the Right Career: Career Counsellors are experts at assessing your aptitude, personality, interests, and other aspects of you. They use this evaluation to suggest the best career options from all the available and relevant options.
Helps Provide Expert Resources: Career Counselling provides access to the resources and knowledge that a career expert possesses. This knowledge of Careers, their scope and the paths to pursue them are most important from the point of view of a parent and child, since most of the times, parents or guardians do not have that kind of knowledge.
Helps Gain Confidence and Insight: Career Counselling helps students to understand the hurdles in his/her career path. This knowledge helps to develop the confidence to overcome these hurdles. It is the duty of a good counsellor to provide such insight and confidence to the students.
Helps Change Unwanted Behavior Patterns: Students and professionals have habits that are hard to break, such as procrastinating, not keeping updated on latest developments in their chosen career paths, neglecting emotional and mental health, not trying to self-motivate, etc. A Career Counsellor helps break such behavioral patterns that lead to unproductive activities, both at home and in school/college/work.
Helps Remove Career-Related Frustration: Choosing a career can be a demanding task for both parents and children. A lack of any source of venting out emotions and thoughts may add to the existing frustration. Career Counselling provides a platform where such frustrations can be reduced, and focus is re-directed to selecting the best career options.
Provides a Role-Model: Career Counselling helps students connect to experts who have enough life experiences to share. They are role models who have accomplished much, and helped people in their life. This is why Career Counselling can serve as an inspiration to those who require it.
Helps Bring Stability in Thought: Career Counsellors can help you remain calm when it comes to taking a career decision. Counselling helps bring about focus, and maintain that focus throughout in our activities. Through proper scheduling and planning, they try and make your life more organized.
Responsibilities of Members:
Our complete Plan to achieve it.
As our main agenda is to provide career counselling to students. So,
1- Our first Plan is to collect the all information about engineering fields,their scholarships. Which universities provide specific engineering fields and what are their merits.
2- By Gathering all this information we will make a booklet containing the information about different Engineering universities in this we also mention their scope in the near future, personal interest, benefits, and difficulties.
3- Third plan is we will collaborate with different academies, schools and universities and then we will ask for permission of allocation of the desk of counselling where we’ll brief the students about different Engineering and medical fields.
4- Fourth plan is we’ll arrange desk at the test centers during ECAT or MCAT and we will brief the students those who are in their first year or 2nd year so that they will have information beforehand.
5- Fifth plan is we will also arrange sessions in different academies and guide them properly.
6- Sixth plan is we will make a Facebook page which will fully functional and will post on career counselling on daily basis.
7- Our last but not the least plan is we will launched a website about career counselling in which we will upload all the list about engineering universities and also students will have access online.
The timeline of all these activities to be performed are within 2 months and 80% of our work is already done. Now we are finalizing our initial tasks and soon we will start working as fully professional career counsellors and help our youth to take the right path which is best suitable for their career.
Report of last 15 days
We planned to collect all the related information regarding the Universities and Scholarships they are offering So that the students would have a handy approach over the large sum of data in just single booklet. We divided the 34 different fields of Engineering amongst our self and did a detailed research on all the Engineering’s offering all over Pakistan. We also created a Facebook page and developed a website because we are in modern era where mobile phones and laptops are in approach of everybody and social media and Internet plays an important role in the daily life of youngsters. That’s why we opted this method of using both the print and electronic media to spread our objective and information to maximum number of students.
Here is the link of our Facebook page
And the link of our website
We also reached out to the students appearing for the ECAT test at University of Gujrat and held a counseling desk there, where we talked about the different fields in Engineering with parents and students. It helped a lot of parents and ECAT aspirants who are confused about different fields of engineering so we tell them scope of fields and helped them with the admission timelines of different universities.
Because it’s just a start up so we might lack some x-factor so we welcome the positive feedback which can help us grow better.
Blog Post by Circle # 2
Team Spiderman
(Adil, Usama, Ahmed, Bushra, Umair, Asad, Maimoona, Usman)
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