As a follow up to our previous article, we would like to put up the continuation of our interview with Manorama Prabhu. In this segment we tried to focus our attention to the secular life our youth; their education, career, etc all with the aim of grooming decent juveniles that represent our movement in their respective areas and to the world at large. Over the years we have had issues in our movement with the youth feeling ‘displaced’ in the secular world especially those who don’t want to become full time devotees and who intend to raise families and there has always been the question “how do they(the youth) make this transition with less anxiety?”.
It is in this light that we also asked HG Manorama Prabhu the following:
CDM: Does the youth Ministry have any structure in place to guide/counsel youths in achieving a balance in their life (i.e. Education, career etc) so as to enable them become better representatives of ISKCON to the world at large?
Manorama Prabhu: Whenever we meet with leaders and interested parties and think about the scope of what ISKCON Youth Ministry should cover, this topic comes up. Helping youth improve their material lives. (And, some ask, is this within the scope of ISKCON or ISKCON youth ministry? Are we an organization that should develop the material lives of our congregation members? Or are we doing this only because there still do not exist sufficient social services organizations within ISKCON -- so we are filling the gap so to speak?)
Over the years ISKCON Youth Ministry has offered career guidance workshops, career classes, a database project called "Project Future Hope" that matched young people's talents to devotee businesses looking to employ young people. We've also tried to work with educational projects to help integrate our youth into the world at large (as far as the transition from Gurukula to public university is concerned, for example.) The Bhaktivedanta International School in Vrindavan, for example, began using Indian standard academic curriculum to allow their students to take and pass the national Indian exams and thus transition into regular colleges, universities, etc, because of the efforts of ISKCON Youth Ministry volunteers.
It is certainly within the scope of ISKCON Youth Ministry (due to the current lack of other social services orgs in our movement) to help guide / counsel youth on education and career opportunities. The blueprint is there from past efforts. It can be replicated in local communities. We have the career guidance materials available to share, for example. We have the experience of having run the Project Future Hope database, that can now be run online via a website, Facebook group, LinkedIn, and similar.
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