The COVID-19 crisis has serious consequences for India’s adolescents and youth, requiring urgent attention to be paid to the impact of the crisis on young people across the country. This report, therefore, highlights the pandemic’s effects on adolescent- and youth-serving non-profit organizations across the country. It draws on responses to an online survey of 111 organizations from the 10to19 Community of Practice, which, together, work with more than 30 lakh young people across the country. The report probes into the various consequences that have been observed among any adolescents or youths and the organizations that service them since the beginning of the lockdown. The findings range across key themes, including access to education, livelihoods, mental health impacts, the experience of violence and early marriage, and access to reproductive and health services as well as the extent of household hunger and loss of livelihoods. It also puts forth key recommendations for civil society organizations to keep in mind as they adapt their programs to account for the “new normal” of post-COVID-19 life.
“The only way to control and defeat this mammoth pandemic was to make people follow social distancing and also to restrain them from moving out to avoid social connect.”
