The Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE) has deployed new mobile app named ‘Dost For Life’ to help out students in psycho-social wellness. The app will be helpful for Classes 9-12 students. In the past many years CBSE used to roll out telephonic counseling facility to help students in need. However, this time CBSE has rolled out ‘Dost For Life’ app so students can get counseling from the comfort of home using mobile phone.
The ‘Dost For Life’ app will be highly helpful to students in Covid-19 pandemic situation. Also the app will be highly helpful to students and parents of CBSE-affiliated schools in different geographies across the world.
The live counselling sessions will be completely free of cost and held thrice a week on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. The trained counsellors/principals will deliver the counseling session. This year, CBSE has 83 volunteers out of which 66 are in India and 17 based out of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Nepal, Oman, Kuwait, Japan and the USA.
There will be two counseling slots 9:30 am to 1:30 pm or 1:30 pm to 5:30 pm; the students and parents can chose to any slot and connect to counselor using Chatbox. At present CBSE ‘Dost For Life’ app is available on the Google Play store and can be easily downloaded on any android phone. Also CBSE Board has plans to roll out ‘Dost for Life’ App for other mobile users.
In addition, CBSE has published a manual that discusses the interplay of school, family and community for the psychosocial well-being of students. The manual has dedicated chapters on dealing with the current Covid-19 pandemic and Covid appropriate behaviours. You can download the manual from cbse.nic.in.