Jharkhand leads with example in terms of women empowerment : Creating facilities for skill development of women from marginalized section of the society

Ranchi, Jharkhand | March| 22, 2021 :: Women empowerment is a key priority area for the incumbent government of Jharkhand led by Chief Minister Hemant Soren. To make strides in this area, the government is establishing skill training infrastructure across the state with special focus ascribed to women from marginalized and weaker sections of the society.

With this vision in mind, Pan IIT Alumni Reach for India Foundation and agencies of the Department of Welfare (DoW), Government of Jharkhand (GoJ) collaborated to create a joint non-profit social enterprise, PREJHA foundation. With the help of funds from the government and existing government infrastructure, PREJHA is establishing Kaushal Colleges across different districts in Jharkhand. The foundation transforms old government buildings into a state of art training centres for candidates from ST, SC, minority, backward class, or the economically weaker sections of the society.

At present, there are 6 ANM Nursing colleges and 1 ITI college being run in the state. Additionally, 2 more ANM nursing colleges will be inaugurated during 2020-21 in the districts of Latehar and Jamtara. Recently, the 1st batch of Chanho Nursing College graduated. From this batch of 120 candidates, over 100 Nurses have already been placed in companies like Apollo, Cloud 9 & HCG.

* Supporting women to achieve self-reliance

Anjali Kumari hails from Silgain Village of Chanho Block in Ranchi. Today, she works at the Apollo Home Care Hospital as a nurse and takes care of her family through the livelihood she earns. Earlier, her family of four lived in a one-room house in their village where her father used to run a street food stall and could barely make an income of Rs.6000 per month. However, Anjali was committed to stand on her own feet and alleviate her family.

It was during her graduation that she got to know about the Nursing college in Chanho. She appeared for the respective entrance test and got herself admitted into the course. With the help of the PREJHA foundation, she got an interest-free loan from HDFC Parivartan to pay her subsidized course fee. Today, she is paying her loan EMI as well as helping her family. There are hundreds of girls like Anjali who are writing such positive stories of change with the training provided at Kaushal Colleges.

*  Interest-free education loan with the post-placement payback plan

Students securing admission into the 1-2-year formal training courses can also avail of education loans. With help from the government, these students get guaranteed free and interest-free loans from the Banks. After completion of the training module, these newly recognized nurses get placed across the country in different reputed organizations. Most of the time, the Kaushal college trains prospective nurses as per the demand of manpower received from the field organizations. This further ensures 100% placement. Once the job starts, EMI automatically gets deducted from their monthly salary account as per the MoU signed between the college and respective Bank.

* Provision of training programmes as per international standards

Kaushal Colleges have been established as per the international parameters of training. Here students are trained through classroom programmes and special emphasis is laid on providing practical hands-on training to the students. With the idea of instilling confidence in the students vis-à-vis using different types of medical equipment, labs equipped with standard prototypes and medical service facilities that are used by the hospitals across the subcontinent have also been set up.

The colleges could not operate during 2020-21 due to the lockdown imposed because of COVID-19. However, 1500 students are enrolled at the moment across different colleges under various training programmes.

To ease the application process for the girls of Jharkhand, an online portal has been created. Any eligible candidate interested in taking admission into Kaushal College can apply through https://app.prejha.org/registration.php

Apart from this, a helpline number has been also released by the PREJHA foundation. One can call on 6204800180 and talk to the representative of Kaushal College.