Heartfulness Education programme is to ensure holistic growth of ITI teachers and students

The Directorate of Employment and Training, which functions under the Labour and Employment department, has initiated a Heartful Education programme for teachers and students of Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) in the state. The state govt is not incurring any  cost for this initiative. 

The Heartfulness Education programme, to be offered by Hyderabad-based Heartfulness Education Trust, enables teachers and students to live a balanced, purposeful, and happy life using heart-based practices, so that they are equipped to contribute towards a sustainable school reform and community citizenship. The Trust runs 5,000 meditation spots across India.

“We have initiated a number of steps to improve the quality of teaching at ITIs in the last couple of years. We have also steps to improve soft skills of students who are undergoing training at ITIs. The aim of the Heartfulness Education programme is to ensure holistic growth of thousands of ITI teachers and over 1.50 lakh students,” said Vipul Mittra, additional chief secretary, Labour and Employment department.

Mittra also said that the programme will be conducted in three phases.

The first phase is INSPIRE, which is a teacher’s training programme. It will cover communication skills of teachers, and help them to become facilitators and not just teachers.

“This will be conducted in Gujarati and help teachers learn new training methodologies. It is planned to be held from October 26 to 30 through online medium,” he said.

The second phase of the programme is HELP (Heartfulness Experience of Life Potential), which will help students learn soft skills, decision-making skills, and make them aware of sustainable development goals. It will also stress on meditation. Meditation improves focus, reduces stress and depression in Covid times. It will comprise 20 online sessions of 45 minutes each. It will also comprise an online Stress Happiness Attention(SHA) Test for evaluation of students. It is expected to commence in the first week of November and be completed by March.

The final phase of the programme is Essay Training. Along with the United Nations Information Centre, the Heartful Education Trust conducts an essay event, where the students are required to submit entries of 700-word essays on a selected topic