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| Vocational Training Units | ||
| Nanban’s auto rickshaw project | ||
| Girls who have been abused through sexual exploitation are being helped to change their lives. For many, poverty is a primary factor in precipitating this abuse, and is a key factor in their inability or unwillingness to leave the sex trade. Income generating opportunities that create real and sustainable earning capacity are not easily provided. It is extremely challenging for all programmes to look creatively to encourage this. In looking at alternative income generating projects, NANBAN came up with the innovative idea of the children, including the girls, becoming rickshaw-taxi drivers. Despite opposition and prejudice, the young people were keen and demonstrated high levels of commitment. These girls had already demonstrated considerable strength of character in making decisions to leave their homes; they had survived sexual abuse, and were able to make positive changes in their lives. All were factors which gave confidence in the girls tenacity and ability to succeed. They were trained as drivers and were given loans for their equipment, with a repayment schedule. They had lessons in karate to be able to defend themselves. This activity has offered them the opportunity to earn substantial sums, and become independent. They can feel positive about their future prospects. They can move on from dependence on the projects towards a full and independent life, in which the have some control over their future, and are rewarded for their own efforts. | ||
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| Nanban’s automobile repair workshop | ||
| Youth, both boys and girls, who have mechanical aptitudes or interested in learning the work here, are eligible to participate. The minimum educational requirements for participation is the ability to read and write simple sentence and do small sums. Nanban gives all its children basic education and equip them for this task. Participants stay for a minimum of six months and then depending on the need for accommodating other trainees, they are eased out and supported in either finding quality employment or in setting up their own workshops. Nanban helps them to find skilled employment in other workshops, not necessarily in the city and also helps them setup workshops as cooperative ventures. Their training equips them for this future. If new workshops are established, they could serve as down stream ancillaries to the Nanban shop, attending to minor repairs according to the equipment and facilities available. Skills provided to the youth enable them to find lucrative employment in the industry and in course of time, set up their own mini workshops. Initially, they may not be able to set up units on their own, since they will need capital and other investments. But with proper husbanding of their wages and savings, they should be able to bring about a quantum change in their lives. Finding employment will be no problem, so long as they acquire sufficient skills. Already there are hundreds of ‘workshops’ in the city which employ persons without any skill training. So fully skill- trained personnel will be a premium, an asset for any repair workshop unit. The drop out ratio, from Nanban’s experience is less than ten percent on a conservative estimate. Nanban has learned to tackle the disruptive forces that make youth leave the programme. Counseling, value education and regular camps help them stay on in the project until they acquire the needed skills. |
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| Nanban's Agricultural Farms & Animal Husbandry units | ||
| That Nanban is involved in the development project and animal husbandry a good future for the children of the area in learning the details of proper agricultural activities like cultivation, manuring, harvesting, water management, animal raising, feeding and nursing the calves, marketing of the farm produce, etc. in a scientific and systematic way with economic usage of modern technologies. | ||
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| Nanban's Bakery Production and Sales Unit | ||
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NANBAN runs Bakery and Snacks Bar at Panagal Road, Madurai with the mandate to provide an educational employment experience for the vulnerable youth and women in slums in order to train them in management, marketing, and business skills that will support them to bring back to the mainstream of the communal life. The stipend bakery training and support programme enables Nanban to give upto date professional skill training to street youth (Boys/Girls) who are unemployed, impoverished, unskilled youth, to secure jobs in the industry each year and to meet all the aspirations of the disadvantaged youth in the area, so that they are not neglected in the society. The training develops the self confidence and self respect of the youth involved in this project so that they lead a good life (decreasing dependence on drugs, prostitution, etc.) and contribute to their community. The women within the Kalasam (Self Help Groups promoted by Nanban in the slum areas ) are already setting up small food stalls which caters to the community at a low cost the normal menu of indigenous food. Other women can be encouraged to set up outlets for low cost bread in the beginning and later gravitate to market cakes. Since there are already many food stalls and cookeries it will not be too difficult to promote supplementary low cost food. Nanban has always been a pioneer in any field. Thus we foresee a big change in the food habits and this change is possible if we are able to set up shops in the appropriate location which puts bakery products at affordable prices. Since we also plan to cater to the slum people through mobile vans that sells only fresh products in a hygienic manner the demand is sure to grow. These activities will create a demand for supplementary food within the slums we work in and so the self help group women promoted by Nanban will be able to set up shops which can run on profit. With the increase in demand for bakery products there will be an increase in demand for good bakers which Nanban can provide from the first year onwards. It will also pave the way for the newly trained bakers to set up their own bakeries with Nanban’s help. |
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