CHENNAI: Jayashree Gopikrishnan was a BSc Electronics and Communications graduate, facing an uncertain future in 2015. It was chance and circumstance that got her acquainted with ANEW and had her sign up for their three-month Basic IT course. It was only when she began the programme did she realise that it came with the added benefits of language training, communication training, lessons on being prepared for interviews, career counselling and more.
Thanks to this, the first generation graduate (besides her elder sister a couple of years before) landed a BPO job in Accenture. Today, she continues that work at Cognizant, taking home good pay and supporting her widowed mother and herself.
It was a door-to-door campaign that allowed Yamin Banu to reap the benefits of ANEW’s Home Nursing programme. After having to drop out of school and get married at the age of 15, she was left with few prospects. All that changed in 2009. Six months later, she found work and a chance at steady employment and livelihood. Today, she proudly declares that she doesn’t rely on her husband, a driver, for money, and educates her children with the money she makes.
Origin story
In the 25 years since its inception, ANEW (Association for Non-traditional Employment for Women) has scripted 14,000 such success stories. After many a trial and error, additions and revisions, the non-profit organisation continues to offer women from underprivileged backgrounds a chance at financial independence through three verticals — Auxiliary Nursing, Car/Auto Driving and computer courses. They make sure to find their students employment through their own placement cell — all without the beneficiaries having to pay a single rupee.
“When we started, we did not imagine we would reach the 25th year,” begins Vinodini Sudhindran, ANEW president, adding that it’s been the same team (short of a few people who moved or passed away) that’s still running the operations. “We started in a small way with a group of people who wanted to do something for society. Twenty-five years back, it was plumbing, electrician work, and carpentry. Then, we started nursing because then nurses mostly came from Kerala.
Then, we brought in driving courses and later, computer courses. We tried several other courses but landed on the three we are running now,” she recounts, with ANEW secretary Sumalini Shrikumar chipping in with additional details. “When we started the driving course, there were not many women drivers,” she notes.
The nursing course used to be a three-month training at a single hospital; now, it is a six-month course with practicals at multiple hospitals and clinics. This course too comes with some training in net literacy and language. Computer courses, when they were started, used only consist DTP and publishing. Now, that is called Basic IT, while the advanced course comes with the options of Tally, E-Publishing and Phyton. With the driving course, they graduated from auto driving to car driving; now, they offer both. Some of their students have even gone on to take up heavy duty vehicles, some are ambulance drivers, others ferry schoolchildren in autos or IT workers in cabs.
ANEW has managed to successfully scale up its operations year on year. It has been quite fortunate with donors, sponsors and CSR contributions over the years, allowing them to keep all their work pro bono. Their corporate partners have also been generous in terms of training resources or employment opportunities. “Those days it was easier, it was more like running your own home. It was smaller numbers, there were no heavy rules to be followed. We only did small fundraising because our budget was small. As you grow, you get ambitious. We trained 200 girls (a year), then 400; next year, we are likely to cross 1,000. So, our budgets have grown too,” shares Vinodhini.
Prospects aplenty
Yet, it has not been without challenges. To ensure that their services reach the people most in need of it, they introduced selection criteria. This process can get quite difficult, they report. Right now, they work with women aged between 18 and 35 years; in some cases, they do allow for exceptions. They work with colleges and universities, offering the computer courses for third year students in order to best guide them all the way to employment. And placements can be unexpectedly tough too.
Despite the language and communication training offered, placements for students in their IT courses can take a while to land the right job. However, the parents often require some convincing too, says Sumalini. While personal connections, word of mouth and positive references have helped through a majority of their placements, they would certainly like to collaborate with more organisations for jobs in future.
Until then, students keep making their way to ANEW in the hopes of a better future. Priya, Swathi, Shakthi and Anitha are just some of them. While Priya and Swathi (BBA students) are enrolled in the Basic IT course, Shakthi and Anitha (BSc Microbiology) just made their way to the Advanced course to study E-publishing, a career path they never knew existed till they landed here. All of them being first-generation college students, this was the place that offered them direction and viable options that their parents or even the college couldn’t provide. And they haven’t stopped telling their friends about it.
For details, and to contribute, visit : anewindia.org