Life-Skills Training Centre, East Kolkata

Location: Panditya Road, East Kolkata
Started: August 2008
Teachers: 4
Pupils: 65
Partner: The Hope Foundation

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educo partners with the NGO The Hope Foundation to run this life-skills training centre in Kolkata, the aim of which is to provide quality and professionally designed vocational training to adolescent and adult males and females, who are living below the poverty line and are unable to access vocational training from state-run institutes.

The majority of workers in the informal sector in India have had limited formal education and typically have never received vocational training. Current state-run skills training courses, because of their educational entry requirements, exclude the underprivileged. The main objective of this project therefore is to enable trainees to become more employable and to therefore break the cycle of poverty in which they have found themselves.

The majority of the trainees come from the slum areas local to this part of East Kolkata. The centre consists of three training units (Food & Beverage, Pattern Making & Garment Construction, Computer Training) which allow the students to learn various life-skill activities, all through the medium of English. Such skills include culinary and waitressing, craft-making and garment construction, as well as of course the English language itself and computer skills.

After completing their training, the students (under professional supervision) run each production unit, which includes a restaurant and clothing shop. The production units secure orders from the market and are also responsible for the delivery of goods. In the long term, the goal is for each production unit to be self-sustainable and to be run as a cooperative.

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Goals:-

1. To continue to develop contacts between the centre and local businesses to generate a higher level of income for the goods and services produced by the Production Units.
2. To continue to provide the necessary training to underprivileged girls allowing them to generate a decent level of income when they leave the programme.

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