How Nawa Lousing helps Manipur’s youth in relief camps with life skills

In the heart of Manipur, amidst displacement and despair due to the ongoing conflict, a quiet but powerful transformation is underway. A former college campus in Imphal East, once alive with academic chatter, now serves a different purpose. It is a refuge — a relief camp — and in its corridors, children laugh and draw, not because their trauma has vanished, but because someone is showing up for them with intention and care.

“The corridors were silent and gloomy, yet filled with life and stories,” writes Khaidem Nongpoknganba, a social entrepreneur, academic, and the cofounder of the Nawa Lousing Life Skills Program, designed for adolescents displaced by the ongoing ethnic conflict in Manipur. “Children greeted me with magnetic smiles that masked the weight of displacement. Their hygiene was poor, their posture weary, but their laughter carried something indestructible.”

As the co-founder and CEO of Tengbang Sintha Foundation (TSF), Khaidem’s journey into this work is deeply personal — a response not just to present suffering, but to the unresolved pain of his own childhood.

Life skills as lifelines

Growing up in an abusive environment and a punitive education system, Khaidem was a brilliant student who lacked the basic tools to navigate life. “Despite being a school topper, I was once expelled. The contradiction marked me for life. I had intelligence, but no tools for coping then. No language for stress, no concept of self-awareness, no sense of safety,” he recalls.

This gap — between academic success and emotional survival — became the basis for his future work. It took root in a cramped PG room in Delhi’s Rajinder Nagar, where Khaidem, at the height of the Manipur conflict, was reflecting on the violent suppression unfolding back home. “I knew that grief alone was not enough. I had voiced my anger, written articles, debated, and protested. But the suffering in Manipur demanded more than awareness. It needed action.”

That action took shape in Nawa Lousing, which means “Children’s Wisdom” in the Meitei language. Designed not as an academic intervention, but as a healing framework, the program teaches adolescents essential life skills through activity based learning- storytelling, role plays, drawing, and games at minimal cost. “They aren’t mere activities. They are acts of self-restoration,” he explains.

Unlike most educational outreach models, Nawa Lousing doesn’t focus on grades or tutoring. It works in three levels — Basic, Intermediate, and Advanced — and is rolled out in shelters and relief camps where formal schooling has been disrupted.

The curriculum centres on what many dismiss as “soft skills,” but which Khaidem insists are fundamental to survival: learning how to say no, asking for help, regulating emotions, and making safe decisions. And to an extent more advanced topics like financial literacy and media literacy are covered. “Too often, life skills are dismissed as soft skills. But for adolescents growing up in chaos, they are foundational,” he says.

This commitment is evident in stories like that of Khambaton, a boy from one of the camps who was initially labelled as “unruly” and “reckless”. “In class, he couldn’t sit still. But over the weeks, I saw him change. He began to listen, to reflect, to care. Today, he is one of the most humble and steady boys with a cool mind” Khaidem shares. “His story reminds me that healing is possible and change is often quiet before it is visible.”

A different kind of volunteerism

At the heart of Nawa Lousing lies a bold reimagining of what it means to volunteer. In a region like Manipur, where unemployment is widespread and volunteering is often reduced to mere tokenism or social media optics, the Tengbang Sintha Foundation (TSF) has chosen to flip the narrative.

“The volunteer model we developed is grounded in empathy, not hierarchy of labour,” explains Khaidem, who leads the volunteer management systems too. Rather than seeing volunteers as temporary helpers, TSF nurtures them as companions—trained, mentored, and emotionally supported to walk alongside conflict-affected adolescents on a shared path of growth. This ethos is embodied in Companion Connect, a flagship initiative that pairs trained volunteers across India with young people in Manipur’s relief camps, offering sustained, peer-led emotional support.

For Khaidem, this model is a direct intervention against the historical failures of unsustainable and underprepared volunteer systems in the region.

Elangbam Tama, a volunteer based in Imphal who recently completed her B.Ed., reflects, “Seeing everyone come together for a cause we deeply care about reminded me why I love volunteering. It’s not just about the activities we do, but the connections we build along the way.” Echoing this spirit, Vatsala, a virtual volunteer from Delhi, adds, “I would love for all of us to be as intentional as possible with the amount of time we are able to devote to volunteering for TSF.”

The bigger picture

Nawa Lousing is not just a program — it’s a statement. It says that children deserve more than gifts; they deserve resilience. It says that healing is not a luxury but a right, especially for those who have seen more than their fair share of violence and loss.

It is also, undeniably, a part of Khaidem Nongpoknganba’s personal story. “This work is personal. It is rooted in my own childhood, where systems failed me despite my academic potential,” he writes. His journey began with the formation of Progressive Youth for Peace, a grassroots initiative that championed critical thinking and debate. That early spark evolved into what is today Tengbang Sintha Foundation — a registered Section 8 company under the Indian Companies Act — rooted in compassion, accountability, and the belief that peace must be practiced, not preached.

The foundation works in tandem with community partners, parents, and local institutions to embed the life skills program into the broader recovery framework. As Khaidem puts it, “Our goal is not to fix children, but to walk with them as they rediscover themselves.”

From silence to strength

The violence in Manipur has displaced thousands, fractured communities, and upended lives. But in one repurposed classroom at a relief camp, a child is learning how to breathe through stress, to name their feelings, to say “no” and “I need help.” That is no small victory.

It is easy to look at the scale of the crisis and feel helpless. But Nawa Lousing reminds us that even amid despair, there are ways to respond — with presence, with purpose, and with nurture.