Youth Leaders Forum 2026: 500 Adolescents Trained in Life Skills
BITAN's annual Youth Leaders Forum brought together 500 adolescents from 6 districts for a 3-day residential training on leadership, gender equity, mental health, and civic participation.
Five hundred adolescents aged 14–19 gathered in Kolkata from 10–12 January 2026 for BITAN's fourth annual Youth Leaders Forum — the organisation's flagship event for adolescent empowerment. Participants from six districts — South 24 Parganas, North 24 Parganas, Howrah, Nadia, Murshidabad, and Malda — spent three days in residential training covering leadership skills, gender equality, mental health awareness, and civic participation.
The forum opened with a session on adolescent rights, co-facilitated by BITAN's youth programme team and a UNICEF resource person, setting the tone for a curriculum built around real decision-making scenarios drawn from participants' own lives. Group exercises simulated gram panchayat budget hearings, anti-bullying mediation, and community public health campaigns — skills the participants are expected to apply when they return to their Kishori Clubs back home.
This year's forum introduced a dedicated mental health module developed in consultation with a clinical psychologist. The module, which used peer-led discussion rather than lecture format, created space for adolescents — particularly boys, often excluded from emotional health conversations — to talk openly about stress, relationships, and identity. Feedback forms indicated this was rated the most valuable session by 64% of participants.
"I never thought a government scheme would listen to me. Now I know I can speak up at the panchayat meeting," said one 16-year-old participant from a village in Murshidabad. Such outcomes are the intended design: BITAN's Kishori Club model trains adolescents not just as individual leaders but as community change agents who feed into local governance structures.
The 500 youth trained will return to their clubs as peer educators, cascading learnings to an estimated 4,500 additional adolescents through club meetings over the next six months. BITAN has been running adolescent development programmes since 2008, and has seen former forum participants go on to become ASHA workers, panchayat members, and NGO staff.