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Empowerment
We take a two-pronged approach in our work of empowering the
rural folk to change their lives and shape their own future:
•
Building Awareness
•
Skills Training
Building Awareness
Rose Trust makes Dalits aware of their human rights
and their political and social situation through the following
methods:
• Providing informal education about these aspects of
their existence. Dalits, traditionally the most
underprivileged people in rural and urban India, are socially,
economically and culturally weak due to poverty, illiteracy
and ignorance. Using this opportunity, the upper caste people
dominate, ill-treat and exploit them.
The various rights awareness programmes conducted by Rose
Trust have resulted in a better informed rural community that
is able to challenge the status quo about its socio-economic
standing and successfully change the age-old, unjust practices
against it. Rose Trust makes extensive use of folk art forms
such as street plays to inspire such critical thinking in the
community.
Here are a few of the awareness campaigns we have conducted so
far:
-Workshop Against Women Violence
ROSE organized a two day workshop on prevention of
violence against women. About 62 women middle aged women
participated in the workshop. Sr.Therasa was the chief
resource person for the workshop. She communicated the
importance of the role of women domestically and socially and
also discussed the reasons and cause of violence, infanticide,
unsafe abortion, unsexual practices etc. After the workshop
commenced, the women ROSE against the atrocities against them
and conducted street kits on the same.
-Organising Humanist Group
Rose Trust volunteers got the opportunity to talk to
volunteers from Italy and learned a great deal about “self
organization”, “personal work” and “social work”. Having
initiated 14 humanist groups across 7 villages, ROSE conducted
meetings on a weekly basis, discussing various issues and
conducting community action programme. The volunteers paid a
monthly subscription to the humanist movement. The team
consisted of 128 members, 10 team delegates, 1 supportive and
1 administrative secretary.
-Youth Orientation
Nowadays, the younger generation is increasingly addicted
to the intake of Tobacco, Pan Parag and other appalling
activities such as smoking, alcohol, drugs etc. To sensitize
the youth to these evils, ROSE organized a two day seminar on
political empowerments, life skill development, spiritual
guidance, yoga and other such therapeutic activities. The
seminar created quite an impact and encouraged the youth to
observe good behaviour, thereby training them to be socially
responsible citizens.
IEC Materials (Information, Education and Communication)
The awareness programmes conducted by Rose Trust are
supported by a vast array of IEC materials. These are often
considered as the best tools in the hands of the development
workers and are imperative for social development initiatives
as they enable the social workers to structure the messages to
be passed on to the target community.
One of the best set of IEC materials published by Rose Trust
was on the subject of women’s rights. 1000 such posters were
distributed to benefit neighboring organizations, other
networks, field level organizations, hospitals, health
centres, schools, village level administration offices
(Panchayats), Government offices and private institutions.
This initiative was supported by Maypole - UK.
Skills Training
Gone are the days when women limited their activities only
to their kitchen and homes. The new age woman is more than
ready to stand up for her cause and be responsible for her
living. To help adolescents and young women stand up as
strong, confident individuals in the society and become
economically self-reliant, ROSE runs the following projects:
• Tailoring Training Centre, training adolescent girls
who are 16-18 years of age and young women 19-25 years in
tailoring, including training in embroidery and needle work.
40 young girls and women are trained every year in 2 batches
of 20 each for a period of six months. On the completion of
the course Rose Trust helps them to obtain a bank loan to buy
their own tailoring machine. To ensure that the quality of
trained candidates is high, primary education has been
prescribed as the minimum educational qualification for
aspiring trainees.
• Computer Cum Secretarial Skills course is also
available to 40 trainees every year in two different batches
at Vandavasi and Thellar blocks. School drop outs and
unemployed youth who have had high school and higher secondary
education are eligible to undergo this training. The basic
skills of computer application and various secretarial skills
like book keeping, communication skills and office maintenance
are taught.
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