Financial Empowerment to women Though Higher Education and Life Skills building to enhance Employability

Every year in Tamil Nadu, thousands of talented young women from underprivileged families leave school with outstanding achievement in academics and sports. Do they go on to achieve highly in college, earn a degree and make a better life for themselves and their families? No. The sad reality is that they typically fall off the academic ladder and enter a life of manual labour, or get married off at an early age and slowly give up on their dreams, simply because a college education is beyond their means. Even if they do join college, as they lack Englsih laanguage skills, social skills and other life skills to perform well in interviews and remain unemployed.

At Pudumai Penn, we want to change that. 

We are an NGO that aims to create a positive impact in young women’s lives by supporting talented young women to pay their college fees, and coaching, mentoring and supporting them to render them ready for employment and financial independence. Read more about our work at www.pudumaipenn.org.

The Pudumai Penn foundation supports young women through four key areas of work:

Academic Scholarships

Three to five years financial assistance programme to cover tuition fees of qualifying girls who have passed their 12th standard board examination, so they can obtain university degree in a file doc their choice and plan career in that. Scholarships are awarded in 3 categories. : under graduate, professional education like engineering , medicine, CA and also sports scholarships for those who are aiming to specialise in individual sports.

Structured Learning Intervention

During their college years, they are also trained in English language, digital media in their first year to enable them to gain part time employment. 2nd and 3rd year are focussed on Life skills. The programme aims to draw out their innate potential and to create employable graduates who employers will queue up to select and offer the best salaries. Our Library and Book reading sessions inculcate reading habits to improve their General Knowledge.

Computer Proficiency Training

Computer proficiency at our own customer build center in Chennai office provide training in typical applications used in office environment , internet search and commerce applications to facilitate part time jobs during their college years.

Placement

Special sessions on writing resume, Interview skills , group discussions in their final year enable them to perform well in campus interviews . We also support in getting internships for students pursuing professional courses like IT, CA, etc.. Plans are on to invite corporate sector to conduct interviews in our premises once the number of students increase.

In May 2017 The Foundation is completing three years since inception which is a proud moment for the Foundation members, volunteers and students.

Out of the first set of seven students selected in 2014 , one student has already graduated out of dental school and is currently working in a dental institute. 5 students will be graduating in June 2017. Very happy to announce 3 of them have got placements in campus interviews which is not trivial considering the condition of the job market. The spoken English training, confidence building workshops enabled them to secure jobs in the first interview itself which is very creditable considering the environment the came from. The Foundation is supporting two students of this batch to prepare for their Bank Officers examination and by end of 2017 they should complete their examinations. The seventh student is in 4 year engineering course and will graduate in 2018.

In 2016-17, our focus on Workshops continued. In the first set of workshops due to lack of space for training in our office only 24 students could be accommodated. The batch was formed by selecting all final year students and balance from second year. In January we commenced workshops for the second year students who have performed well in spoken English. All workshops are being repeated for the second batch with final workshop on May 7th. The first year students who are undergoing digital and spoken English training will also complete their training by end of April. Assessment is scheduled for May 14th to give them feedback on progress.

Another new initiative which commenced in January 2017 is the Spoken English Mentorship program . This was proposed by one of the volunteers and was an instant hit with pilot batch of 3 students who participated. Though the students are enthusiastic about learning English, their speaking skills did not improve significantly as they could not practice it with their families who are mostly workers and not English literate . Hence a volunteer who is a specialist in Learning and Development mooted the idea of holding one hour calls with the students 2-3 times a week at mutually convenient time . It was decided to identify the students who are really weak in spoken English and attach them to the mentors. Each mentor offered to guide 3 students and in the last 3 months around 15 students benefited from this program and have shown remarkable improvement in their speaking skills and confidence to speak only in English. Foundation plans to extend this program to all students of next new batch so that the progress can be much faster and significant and this will be an ongoing program using volunteers .

Another new project that was undertaken was to create a catalogue of available courses around Chennai in all areas of specialities specifically in para medical and other professional areas. This project was done with the help of Rotary members and completed in March 2017. We noticed in the last 3 years the students selecting courses based on suggestions from families(whose knowledge is very limited) or where most students are going (herd mentality) or based on imaginary career aspirations (I want to become a CA) without any career guidance. Hence this exercise was undertaken and we plan to maintain the catalogue by updating every year to enable to students to make the right choice.

Foundation plans to present the details to all participating schools for students in 9th and 10th standards to enable them to choose their groups efficiently after completing their 10th examination. Foundation also plans to invest in aptitude testing tool to guide the students to choose the right field based on their strength. The catalogue also gives details on fees charged by different colleges for same course to facilitate the students selecting their institutions efficiently. As our focus currently is on Central and South Chennai, the travel distance and cost of travel information is also provided to the students in this catalogue.