Connecting Life with Career
We are...
…a national and international network of psychologists, counsellors, social workers and teachers mentored by The Promise Foundation on skills for facilitating the potential realisation of adolescents, youth and their families. We have worked together for three decades to develop research driven applications to deliver professional services and build capacity for career counselling and livelihood planning in India and the developing world.
What is Jiva About?
The word Jiva means ‘life’ in most of the Indian languages. The Jiva programme is based on the premise that a healthy career is integrally connected to one’s life.
Contemporary economic development has dramatically altered earlier notions of work and career. The young person is presented today with a bewildering array of occupational possibilities.
Jiva is a guidance and counselling system that has been designed to support the career and livelihood planning needs of Indian young people through culturally relevant career counselling services.
Jiva interprets career into the Indian economic context, drawing from the roots of our culture to support the career development and livelihood planning of all contemporary Indian young people.
Our Reach
Jiva includes and goes beyond psychometric tests.
Jiva is a teaching-learning experience that prepares the young person for lifelong, self-mediated career development.
What is “career” and what is career guidance?
Read on to know more..
From the Flint to the Microchip
From the Flint to the Microchip
Career is a form of work that finds its being within a specific cultural context…a context characterised by patterns of beliefs and ways of thinking. What family and society have to say about a career path significantly influences career decision making.
Typically, career implies:
- a personal engagement with the world of work
- making a decision and selecting a particular career path
- matching personal suitability (interests, talents) with career tasks
- obtaining appropriate training and qualification
- specialization for ongoing, lifelong development.
What is "Career"?
Career is a form of work that finds its being within a specific cultural context…a context characterised by patterns of beliefs and ways of thinking. What family and society have to say about a career path significantly influences career decision making.
Typically, career implies:
- a personal engagement with the world of work
- making a decision and selecting a particular career path
- matching personal suitability (interests, talents) with career tasks
- obtaining appropriate training and qualification
- specialization for ongoing, lifelong development.
Career is a form of work that requires the willful direction of energy, formal qualification and specialised effort, directed toward meeting societal needs through a specific area of work, for which one gains the means for a livelihood, an identity, social status and opportunities for the realisation of personal potentials.
What is "Career Guidance"?
During earlier times work roles were allocated through social and cultural norms. Occupations ran in families and making a choice was perhaps not as necessary or possible as it today. Probably there was little or no need for career counselling and guidance. However, as new occupations emerged, the issue of matching people to jobs surfaced as a question that needed an urgent answer. Accordingly, systems and methods emerged to match people to jobs on the basis of their traits, abilities, and talents. And so emerged the profession of career guidance and counselling. This systematization of methods to support and facilitate career choice and decision making marks a notable landmark in the history of work.
Career guidance is a service rendered by competent and trained professionals.
It aims, at helping the individual optimise personal potentials through the realisation of his or her social and economic role as a “worker”.
Career guidance supports the individual for the lifelong development of wellbeing as well as the prosperity of society.
Effective, career guidance is informed by a culturally-resonant interpretation of the social, behavioural and pedagogical sciences.
Career as a Continuum
Career did not emerge in all economies spontaneously. In most societies human engagement with work progressed as it had for centuries earlier. Today, the notion of a personal career has made its appearance in many more parts of the world and work has changed from being simply linked to survival needs to something far more complex, requiring increasing amounts of specialization and training.
Therefore, manifestation of career can be seen in two broad contexts: Western cultures where the idea of career was born and non Western contexts where it is, in many respects, culturally alien. In the former, the manifestation of career would be spontaneous and culturally congruent. In the latter, its manifestation could be the result of exigency induced by global transformations.
It seems that the delineation of career from work lies along a continuum. At one end is “career” in its fully developed form, as it has been described above. At the other end is a complete absence of this notion of career. And along this continuum are various culturally mediated manifestations of the idea of career.
Jiva Concepts
A Values Based Approach
Jiva interprets ancient Indian values through simple activities. Participants introspect and work out what career means to them from a lifelong perspective.
Multiple Potentials
Jiva moves beyond accepting academic marks as being the only indication of a person's capabilities. Jiva views the individual as a multidimensional being possessing a combination of intelligences.
Career Discovery Path
Jiva workshops aim at helping students make rational career decisions and learn skills for life-long self-mediation of the labour market. The workshops follow the Jiva Career Discovery Path made up of four key elements: understanding self, understanding the world of work, developing career alternatives and career preparation.
Blending Interest and Aptitude
The Jiva System assesses both Interests and Aptitudes using the Multiple Potentials Framework. This data is combined to find the overlaps between what the young person loves and enjoys as well as what the person has the highest capability for.
Career Beliefs
More often than not, beliefs about careers drive career choice, rather than the person's interests and aptitudes. During Jiva workshops students learn about how their beliefs influence their choices.
Tests and Psychometry
The Jiva approach to assessing the student blends the quantitative with the qualitative. We use both psychometric tests as well as the student's academic record, hobbies and accomplishments to understand the person's potentials.
The Individual and the Context
In many cultures, the individual is not entirely free to pursue the career of his/her choice. Society plays a powerful role in the choices that the individual makes. Jiva helps the young person find the balance between personal wishes and the requirements of the community.
The Family is Important
