Womens Empowerment Committee
Certificate Distribution Ceremony For Skills@School
The Rotary Certificate Distribution Ceremony (Phase 1) for 55 girl students from Colaba Municipal Secondary School and Globemill Passage Municipal School took place on October 14, 2017 at the Colaba Municipal Secondary School. In attendance were President Ramesh Narayan along with Framroze Mehta, Shernaz Vakil and Nandan Maluste from the Women’s Empowerment Committee. Mr. Magar, Principal of the Colaba Municipal Secondary School, Mr. Bhusare, Principal of the Colaba Municipal Primary School and Mr. Gaurav Arora, GM – Skills, Salaam Bombay Foundation also graced the occasion.
Out of this first group of 55 students, 10 girls successfully completed the Home Appliance Repair program, 26 girls successfully completed the Beautician program and 19 girls successfully completed the Computer Hardware program – all being part of Salaam Bombay Foundation’s skills@school program.
The Rotary Club of Bombay has committed to supporting the training of 100 Class 9 girls studying in 2 BMC schools through the skills@ school program for the year 2017- 18. These students are taken through training of a Technical Skill as well as Financial Literacy (which includes 6 hours training of basic financial concepts like ‘Budgeting’, ‘Assets and Liabilities’ and ‘Investments’). Each student is also the beneficiary of a yearly supply of supplemental nutrition, which includes chikki, bananas and buttermilk.
In addition, these students are given a session on ‘Personal Safety For Women’ by Ms. Gazala Azad, a martial arts expert known to have trained thousands of girls in the combative art of Karate. Key themes discussed included ‘sexual harassment in public spaces’, ‘being robbed’, ‘good touch – bad touch’, ‘human behavior’, ‘how to protect ourselves’ and ‘self-realization and awareness’. Ms. Azad provided the students with both practical and theoretical understanding which made it easier for the students to comprehend these lessons, given the sensitivity of the issues.
RCB’s service partners, Salaam Bombay Foundation, introduced the “skills@school program” in 2013 with objectives to provide children in Municipal and Government-aided schools of Mumbai with effective skill building and market orientation, enabling them to think of progressive career paths and completing their education. Since its inception, the program has trained approximately 1635 children, out of which 913 have been girls.
Each child enrolled in the program completes specific training for skills across fields like Beauty & Wellness, Home Appliance Repair, Fashion Design, Mobile Repairing, Computer Hardware, Web Designing, Graphic Designing, Wire Jewellery Making and Auto Service Technician; alongwith important market relevant skills, including Financial Literacy, Conversational English and Entrepreneurship.