Hope for school dropouts

Updated on: Friday, September 03, 2010

Childen and people who have dropped out of school now have a chance to develop a vocation.

Velicham is an institution where school dropouts are trained in a particular skill free of cost.

It is an initiative of P.A. Polytechnic College in Pollachi and though it has been training school dropouts for a while, very few are aware of the institution as it wasnâ€™t made public and in fact, the training was only recently formally launched by the former president of India, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, during his visit to the college.

The instructors train school dropouts who enrol in the institution for six months without obtaining any fees.

â€œWe have seen many students from this area dropout of school and they often end up doing menial jobs as unskilled workers. Hence, we decided to uplift them by training them and providing them with a skill,â€ said the chairman of the P.A. Group of Institutions, Prof P. Appukutty.

So far, 78 school dropouts have been trained at Velicham. "We are happy that all the people who have trained here have jobs; they earn around `6,000 per month," Mr Appukutty said.

The biggest challenge is to convince dropouts to join the institution. This year, just 13 school dropouts have joined the training, told Prof. Appukitty.

The independently managed college is now planning to use the support of the government and NGOs to identify school dropouts from other district and train them.

Hope for school dropouts

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