The career avenues in the socio-economic development sector are diverse.
You could work in non-governmental organisations, hospitals, rehabilitation homes, clinics, for family welfare services, medical social work, with tribal people or even as a lecturer.
Also recommended are related courses which will enhance your prospects.
Many of the related courses are available as recognised correspondence courses.
Business law is offered as a correspondence programme by the National Law School University, Bangalore.
The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has introduced a diploma programme in human resource development (HRD) as well as a certificate course in counselling.
The Xavier Institute of Counselling, Mumbai, conducts a certificate course in counselling. The duration is 50 hours.
The National Council of Education, Research and Training or NCERT runs a nine-month full-time postgraduate diploma in career counselling.
Once you have specialised, you can identify the activities and area of work you wish to be a part of in the following way.
The activities that you will be involved with are training, research and documentation, project proposal development, field work and development administration.
Areas of work cover reproductive and child health (RCH), literacy/education, health, income generation, environment and so on.
The related professional fields you may consider are counselling, social marketing, personnel management, public relations, human resource development, hospital administration and social marketing.
A course in computer applications will enhance your proficiency in all the above mentioned areas.
In India, the recent five-year plans have stressed the importance of networking with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to fulfil identified developmental targets and tackle pressing social problems.
Thus there is an ever widening scope of jobs in NGOs, which have taken up the challenge by launching development oriented projects like Sewa, VHAI, Nirphad or by developing specialised services for different target groups like Chetna (for handicapped children), NIPPCD, Cry (for children), Suraksha (anti-dowry demand and marriage counselling).
There are also openings for professional social workers in international/United Nations accredited non-governmental organisations such as Unicef, UNDP, Norad, Oxfam, Action Aid, Usaid, Care and HelpAge.
There are also World Bank projects such as Swajal, UP Diversified Agricultural Systems Project (UPDASP).
Employment opportunities in the government sector in India will be in the form of labour welfare officers, research officer/directors at the Central Bureau of Correctional Services, extension officers, project officers and field assistant supervisors.
The industrial/corporate sector offers jobs to social workers in the field of human resource development as well as in extension programmes of community development as in the case of Tata Steel.
The writer is the Director of the Institute for Career Studies based in Lucknow, India
