Pratham Education Foundation

Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Sushmita Biswas - A PACE Training Center Success Story!

Pratham 3:08:00 PM

Sushmita Sushil Biswas a 19 year old girl belongs to a small village in the southern part of Maharashtra, Gadchiroli district. Sushmita lives with her family; her father is a farmer, mother a housewife and a brother who studies in school. She passed Grade 10^th and 12^th with good marks and wanted to study further. But staying in Gadchiroli, gave her no scope and opportunities of further studies. As economically her father could not afford to support the cost for her further studies.

One day a mobilizer from District Skill Development Organization met her father and informed him about Pratham’s Hospitality training program and how it was benefitting many young adults like Sushmita. After learning about the program Sushmita’s father went home and told Sushmita.

She was very happy and excited to know about the program and so Sushmita and her parents decided to send her to PACE Hospitality Training in Satara.

When she first arrived at PACE Hospitality Training Centre, Satara. She was very happy; she made new friends and, decided to train in Food and Beverage Service Specialisation. Sushmita learned Computer and English. During her training Sushmita actively participated in all activities, competition and assignments. She passed her final exam with excellent marks; her teachers at the training centre were very much impressed by her hard work and calibre.

Her hard work paid off as she got selected by Hotel Leonia Holistic, a five star hotel in Hyderabad and is currently earning an income of Rs 9000/-per month. Due to her hard work, she recently nominated and awarded Best Employee of the month (September 2014). When we asked her what is her future plan. She said “ to open her own restaurant in future at her native place”.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Voices of Pratham

My Time At Pratham

Pratham 12:07:00 PM

By Shikhir Goel, Volunteer, PMG Team

My name is Shikhir, and I started working at Pratham in July 2013. Now, precisely 1 year down the line I am leaving the organization to pursue my MBA. Looking back, it has been one of the most interesting periods of my life. The friendships I have forged and things I learned in this short space of time have made the experience unlike any other in my previous career.

Before joining Pratham I had worked in finance for 8 years. I was looking for a new challenge, and the prospect of working at Pratham was exciting because it was an opportunity to apply my skills toward helping people in a way that would have a clear and noticeable impact. I came for my interview prepared with ideas to improve coverage of the Urban Program because I had noticed in my research that it was significantly smaller than their Rural Program. Of course it did not take long for me to realize that I had taken on a far greater challenge than originally anticipated! As the months progressed, I began to grasp the complexity of the task I had taken on as I was regularly hit with data issues, lack of uniformity in program structures across states, and a general lack of knowledge about the Urban Program as a whole.

As a result however I learned a great deal about perseverance, patience, managing relationships, and generating meaningful analysis from a limited amount of data. The thing I will remember and miss the most from my time here is the people trying to take this wonderful organization forward. Everyday they seek to overcome new challenges, spending days on end conducting trainings in remote villages, all with an infectious enthusiasm that is truly inspiring. It is this innate drive that everybody I have worked with at Pratham possesses that kept me motivated and interested throughout my time here. This is truly a unique group of people throughout the organization, and I wish them all the very best for the future.

About Us

In a country with over 29 states, over 600 Districts, and more than 350 million children, it is a monumental task to ensure that every child is literate, a task that government cannot accomplish alone. This thought gave birth to Pratham Education Foundation in 1994 with aim of providing pre-school education to children in the slums of Mumbai city. Since then, the organization has grown to become India's largest non-governmental organization to provide education to the underprivileged children in India. Today it is reaching to three million children annually in rural and urban areas across 23 states of the country.