Bhubaneswar: Women and Child Development Minister Tukuni Sahu launched a mobile App ‘Advika’ at State Convention for adolescent girls and boys organized by the Women and Child Development Department in collaboration with UNICEF in Bhubaneswar on Wednesday.
UNICEF and Yuwaah have developed the App with technology support from Microsoft.
The App will support W&CD department’s Advika programme which is a life skill initiative for all adolescent girls and boys in Odisha.
The Advika programme enables all adolescents – especially girls and with a special focus on boys – to exercise their rights and make informed choices with equal opportunities to grow, acquire knowledge, skills and access opportunities for an empowered future.
As many as 12 lakh adolescents have so far joined the Advika programme and the State government is thriving to become a child marriage free state by 2030, elaborated the Minister while launching the App.
The Advika App contains awareness and learning materials about the monthly themes of the Advika calendar. It has specially curated courses on digital skills, employability skills, financial literacy, as well as bonus materials on awareness of careers that adolescents in the state had expressed interest in. The app also carries in-built assessments to record the progress made by them in terms of increased awareness and skills on the thematic issues. Based on the assessments, learners will also be certified, stated Commissioner-cum-Secretary of W&CD Deptt., Bhaskar Jyoti Sarma.
Dhuwarakha Sriram, Chief, Yuwaah, UNICEF India said, “The objective of Advika aligns perfectly with UNICEF and YuWaah, where a comprehensive approach combining health, wellbeing and child rights along with 21st century skills such as digital skills, employability and career guidance is essential for the socio-economic empowerment of adolescents in the state.”
Manju Dasmana, Director Microsoft Philanthropies said, “The fast-widening digital divide has had an adverse impact on populations, particularly on girls and women. It is in this light that I look forward to the Microsoft technology supported powered Advika app, advancing adolescents’ musthave’ skills, namely digital productivity and fluency, so that Odisha’s young people realise their dreams.”
The state government had launched ‘ADVIKA-Every Girl is Unique’-a state wide adolescent empowerment programme on 11th October, 2020 on International Day of Girl Child in collaboration with UNICEF and UNFPA. More than 260 project level and district level whatsapp groups of adolescents have been formed and 600 master trainers have been trained through State ToT on Life Skill Education and use ADVIKA packages for cascade training at project and sector level.
As a result of Advika, as many as 1737 child marriages have been successfully prevented in 2021-22 and nearly 12000 villages of the State are declared child marriage free. Further, 13,614 adolescents aged 17-19 years including adolescent girls rescued from child marriage are being linked to Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Grameen Kaushalya Yojan (DDUGKY) and Skill Development Mission for acquiring skills for livelihood and financial empowerment.
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