O he LIFE (Livelihood Initiatives with Functional Education) center was initiated in Madurai to serve the member families of Kalanjiam SHGs living in urban slums and adjoining rural areas of Madurai district.

The LIFE center aims at imparting livelihood oriented skills to the poor men, women and particularly youth through vocational education. The center targets the slum dwellers like school dropouts, unemployed youth, widows and destitute, differently abled youths, homemakers, etc,. for imparting functional education for impacting livelihoods.

The centre reaches the people through Kalanjiam Self Help Group members and their children who are living in the Slum areas in and around Madurai. These centers provide training services to the poor families in Kalanjiam Self Help Groups as well as the other poor families in Slums for creating livelihood opportunities and enabling them to come out of poverty.

So far, over 3000 youths have been trained in the LIFE on various trades and facilitated to get employed in nearby towns and cities as well as to initiate their own units with the assistance from Kalanjiam Federations.

Adolescent girls learning computer courses

Virtual Computer Class for Adolscent Girls

No doubt the pandemic has taken a toll on the academic life of the students. It has been long since our children have stepped out in the world of classrooms and classes. Noting the change in the lives post pandemic , LIFE center has conceived a virtual training programme for Adolescent girls. The computer course was conducted in accordance with the syllabus prepared by the LIFE centre. The course covered Windows, MS office like MS word, MS excel, MS power point, including online services.

In this course duration one week in through online mode Google meet. All participants are connected to the smartphones and girls who do not have a smartphone get connected through the health associates phone. The Computer Courses conducted by faculties , Mr. Vellaiathevan and Ms. Prabavathi

All classes are shared through PPT using material in English and classes are taken in English and Tamil. Every student asked questions and shared their feedback. The classes are full of energy and are very useful for adolescent girls in this lockdown period.

Every day at the end of the classes questions on course materials are shared by the trainees in Whatsapp the groups promoted for the purpose. The classes have equipped them for the practical sessions.

The training has influenced most adolescent girls to get experience in computers and has increased their self-esteem and confidence.Even the parents are happy that their children are spending their time more proactively.

Also, the participating students are learning to apply online entitlements. We are sure that these computer classes will ultimately increase the skill set of the girls students through attending courses from LIFE centre.

Youth & Development Initiative by Sellur Vattara Kalanjiam

Sellur Vattara Kalanjiam(SVK) is a Kalanjiam federation promoted two decades before. It has 232 women SHGs and 3465 members. It has taken up various development initiatives to uplift its members from poverty. Youth & Development is a new theme being piloted by DHAN. SVK is one among the federations where the Youth & Development theme is being implemented on an experimental basis.

Under the Youth & Development theme, a career planning programme was conducted on 29/05/2021. 10, 11 and 12 students from Madurai Urban Region participated in this event. A total of 118 students participated in the event. The composition is 37 students from 10th, 32 in 11th and 49 from the 12th standard. They are from Maths group – 23 students, Science group - 58 , Commerce group – 37 . This event was conducted virtually due to the covid second wave lockdown.

Mr.Sivanandan, Programme Leader, Youth & Development theme facilitated the event along with Mr.Janakiraman, CFO, DHAN Foundation. Mr. Janaki explained about the courses available for the in science and other curriculum students and the job/profession they could pursue professional courses like Engineering, Medicine, Agriculture, Horticulture, Fisheries and Veterinary, Commerce curriculum courses available. He explained about the job opportunity available for all the courses, its fee structure in Government and private colleges and also about the prospects of obtaining an education loan in a bank. Students and their parents who had participated eagerly asked their doubts. Jankai answered their doubts. We planned to conduct this event every year for the benefit of the students.