The Story of Renuka Gawade...

Renuka Gawade belongs to the district of Gadchiroli in Maharashtra. Her father was a farmer, with a very low income. Despite, abysmal financial conditions, Renuka managed to complete her education till the 12th grade. She aspired to study further, but decided to give up this dream to support her sister for higher education. She took up a job at a local hospital earning a meagre salary of INR 2000 per month to sustain her sister’s education.

Renuka was unhappy with the long hours and the insufficient pay. After working for a couple of months, she stumbled upon a brochure of the Pratham Hospitality Training Program. She decided to enroll herself in the course.

Midway through her training, she received the news of her father’s death.  The sudden demise of her father, left her devastated. Despite this, she pushed forward and with the support of her friends and the faculty she successfully completed her training. She is now placed at Leonia Hoslistic Destination at Hyderabad with a salary of INR 6,000 in addition to food and boarding.

Recognizing Potential- Our Ambitious Entrepreneur, Vrushali

Vrushali Dengle, has studied till the 9^th grade. She is a housewife with two children. Initially lacking confidence, she wanted to do something that would make her financially independent and help her support her family. She heard about the Pune Entrepreneur Training Center through Pratham’s mobilizers. With the center being close to her home, Vrushali was able to enroll. She was interested in the Beauty course and attended her classes regularly, eager to learn new techniques and tricks to the trade. She also simultaneously enrolled in the Foundation Course so as to hone her soft skills while helping her increase her confidence and basic mathematics. Post completion of the course, she appeared for the examination and scored 86%. She expressed her interest to be selected for support to start her own micro enterprise and post screening, was selected for the same.

Today, she has fulfilled her dream of being financially independent. She runs her own beauty parlour and is earning well, between INR 6,000 – INR 7,000 per month. She says, “I have been living here for the last five years but no one knew me. Today, after completing the course through the Entrepreneur Center run by Pratham and supported by Citi Foundation, I am well known and am invited to all the functions in the area. I am proud of myself, but more importantly, my husband and children feel very proud of what I have achieved.” 

Conversations in the Hinterlands

By Azeez Gupta

A quick introduction – I have recently joined the Pratham Institute as part of a pursuit for happiness and meaning. The past 2 years spent working at a renowned consultancy saw me engage in stimulating work with fantastic minds – yet I could never escape the nagging feeling that I was coasting. I missed the violent single-minded passion I experienced during my most fulfilling college years, and hope that working for a cause again will help me re-discover those emotions.

Seeing as I came to Pratham as a relatively green, mostly city boy, who had grown up seeing the poor, but had never really interacted deeply with underprivileged people, I was promptly packed off to see all our programs and centers on the ground. The resulting 2 week trip through the hinterlands of Maharashtra was truly eye-opening. I met dozens of our students, learnt about their lives and heard their stories. In the process, I went from being an armchair intellectual to… well, definitely not an expert, but someone who’s starting to get a pulse of India today. The things we all pontificate about, but really know very little about. In this post, I will try to put down some of my observations, as I remember them. These are random and unstructured reflections, often mundane, and accompanied by my unsolicited comments – but may be interesting to my peers, as cossetted as I was.

• I asked students what they liked best about their time at Pratham training centers. The quickest and most enthusiastic response – “Shaving”! Shaving?! Here we are, claiming to turn your lives around, give you opportunity and all that jazz, and what you like most is shaving?! It was very endearing – and jokes apart, the shaving was part of a broader theme of following rules and regulations and living a structured life. Concepts that we elites resist resolutely, but are both important for and attractive to these young people who’ve lived their lives in relative chaos.

• The level of attention in classes and devotion to learning was extraordinary – it put me to shame, looking back at how many of my batch-mates and I went through our IIT education.

• I heard the personal stories of many students – most were from villages and had absolutely no jobs available at their homes. They spent their times roaming around the fields aimlessly, with nothing to do, and occasionally working on the farms. It bought the scarcity of opportunities home to me very starkly, especially in contrast to the vast expanse of options I have been blessed with all my life.

• The more things are different though, the more they remain the same When I asked what kids use the computer center for, after their daily studies are over, there was a lot of sniggering followed by the euphemism ‘watch videos of movie stars on the internet’. Young men are the same everywhere!

Sunita, Our Multifaceted Entrepreneur

Sunita (on the right) and her assistant at her parlour.

Sunita Petkar from Pune, began her long association with Pratham as a Balwadi teacher and went on to work as a team leader. But, Sunita’s main interest lay in the field of beauty. Pratham identified her potential and passion; and decided to support her under the Beauty Entrepreneurship Program. After taking a refresher training in Advanced Beauty, Sunita set up her first parlour in 2011.

Meena (another entrepreneur supported by Pratham) and Sunita own and oversee two beauty parlours together. Along with providing services to customers, Sunita has a keen interest in teaching. So far, she has trained 60 students in Beauty. Her revenue through only services is between INR 5000- 6000 per month.  Apart from service and training, Sunita also stocks up her parlour with little things like nail paint, earrings, anklets, etc. to sell to customers for some extra income.

PACE Student is Best Trainee of the Month at TAJ