NGOs helping poor students to get private jobs
Date: 24-Oct-2009
New Delhi: After being a lone family member to attend a college and
surviving on whatever little his mother and brother earned from
fieldwork, Gautam Sankpal, 24-year old boy from a small village in
Maharashtra called Wai, is now working as a customer care executive
with Shoppers Stop in Pune.
Gautam also aims to flot his own garment company within five years. "I
hated the fact that we didn't have money and all I wished for was to
get out of poverty," says Gautam, who is glad that his mother doesn't
have to go out for jobs anymore, as he is able to send home, part of
his Rs.4,500 salary every month.
The village boy, turned voice of so many people, owes this
transformation to Pratham; one of the growing ilk of social
organizations that gives vocational training to young people living in
poverty and helps them land jobs in private companies.
Many companies, including Nokia, Taj Hotels, Westside, Croma, Big
Bazaar, Deutsche Bank, HDFC Bank, Cafe Coffee Day and Fun Cinemas, have
responded to this initiative to help gains of reforms to trickle down
to the underprivileged masses by hiring hundreds from training
institutes run by organisations like CAP Foundation, Smile Foundation
and Pratham in slums and other poor localities.
"Through these programmes, poor kids get a livelihood support and we
trained manpower," says Anirban Roy, Senior Manager of HR at Westside,
a retail chain of the Tata group, which has been recruiting people from
institutes run by Delhi-based Smile Foundation.
The Delhi-based organization has helped more than 1,300 youths in the
past one year despite the slowdown forcing many corporates to freeze
hiring. It plans to place more than 25,000 students in the next five
years. "If working with corporates helps in bridging the gap between
haves and havenots, nothing like it," said Naresh Choudhary, COO of
Smile Foundation, which works for universal education and healthcare of
underprivileged children.
These not-for-profit organizations train students to do entry-level
jobs in IT, retail, BFSI, hospitality, construction and agriculture
sector. The profiles include data-entry operators, hardware assistants,
market researchers, sales executives, stewards, housekeeping staff,
white goods repair, maintenance technicians and homecare nursing
assistant.
While CAP Foundation's 'Ek Mouka Jobs' and Smile Foundation's 'twin
e-learning' started three years ago, most of the courses by Pratham
under its PACE programme were started last year. They charge a nominal
fee for the courses that last anywhere between 45 days and six months.
Smile Foundation, for example, charges Rs.50-100 for a six-month
course, depending on a student's payment capacity.
Mumbai-based Pratham charges Rs.1,000-1,500 for its vocational courses,
but it has tied up with companies for these courses. It has tied up
with Godrej Agrovet for an agriculture centre at Satara. It also has
partnerships with Taj Hotels and Deutsche Bank. For its construction
course, which is offered in collaboration with Larsen and Toubro
(L&T) at Latur, Pratham pays Rs.50 every month as a token stipend.
"The corporate partners provided us with the curriculum and the knowhow
and have all also been the major recruiters," said Rajesh Thokale, who
oversees PACE programme at Pratham.
Pratham is the largest NGO (Non-governmental organization) working on
providing education to underprivileged children, reaching out to almost
40 million children mostly in villages. Right now, none of these NGOs
charge any recruitment fee from the companies, but as they scale up
some might start doing so. The income for these recruits ranges between
Rs.3,000 and Rs.18,000, with the financial sector generally paying the
most.
Hyderabad-based CAP Foundation, a private-public partnership to provide
job-oriented education to poor children, has TCS, Tata Steel, DLF,
PepsiCo and Reliance Energy among its partners. It has placed more than
30,000 students in corporate India.
One of them is VP Vijay, 22, who lost his father when he was in class
XI. His mother had to work as a daily wager to bring up her two
children. Vijay landed a job with CST Infotech at Avadi in Chennai
after doing Smile's 'twin e-learning programme' and now supports his
mother and a 19-year old sister who studies at Loyola College. He is
pursuing BA from an open university.
"Neither could I speak English nor did I know how to operate a computer
when I joined Smile. Today, I am independent and my mother doesn't need
to work anymore," said Vijay.
There are many more Vijays and Gautams who have found the joys of life
only recently, thanks to corporate India's support to inclusive growth.
Posted By : Manish Shrivastava
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