MasterCard's community day with Pratham

MasterCard's representatives visited our vocational skilling center at Chembur, Mumbai on the 7th of Sept, 2012. As a part of their CSR initiative, they wished to celebrate their community day with our students. Their delegation included Mr. T.V.Seshadri - Division President, South Asia, MasterCard Worldwide, Ms. Aashna Roy - CSR Head, South Asia, and a few of their colleagues from the Mumbai office.

They shared inspirational industry insights with our students while mentoring and interacting with them. It was heart warming to see how engaged the MasterCard representatives were in regards to our students' everyday stories and challenges. They were deeply concerned with the real world challenges that the students face and wanted to do all that they could to help. One of the representatives even offered to counsel our students to cope with on-the-job issues that they might face after completing our courses.

The MasterCard team came in an hour before noon after which our center manager (Mr. Ajit Bansode) briefed our students on the agenda and its details. The students were then split into 4 groups of 18-20 students in each group and different representatives took charge of counselling and mentoring our students. The representatives talked about the industry opportunities and challenges, ways through which the students can use Pratham's courses to leverage their career, and various other crucial topics to further student knowledge.

The representatives later conducted Q&A sessions in which students 
shared their problems and the representatives tried to help the students resolve the same. They also conducted various fun activities in the 2-hour session which helped boost the students' confidence as well as taught them invaluable skills like self-motivation, honesty, self-contemplation etc. 

The students were then given a 10-minute break after which all of them gathered together once again. A few students were then called upon and they were asked to share their experiences. All the students were captivated by the mentoring sessions and wished it could last longer. There was a deep sense of gratitude towards all of the representatives, who took time out of their busy schedules to mentor the students.

We were grateful to the entire delegation of MasterCard and especially Mr. Sheshadri and Ms. Aashna on behalf of all our students and the staff for having their community day with Pratham. This was the second time they celebrated their community day with Pratham, and wish to continue this engagement by conducting events like these more often. We couldn't have asked for more and we anxiously look forward to deepening our bond with MasterCard.