She cried when her peers in class laughed at her dreams of getting to be a Police Officer. Today she is well on her way to becoming one all because a few good folks decided that their calling was to “upskill” folks so they could get a much needed leg up in life.  LifeDream Skills particularly targets the marginalized and over 4.5 years,  450 jobless dropouts are busy earning 6500 to 9500 pm.  This is truly teaching a man to fish instead of giving him one.

Their modus operandi is to seek space in a community and then recruit these social dropouts. Then they seek volunteers to teach a specific curriculum crafted by IIM Professors. In 3 months, the class will see some dropouts but the majority stay and they go on to make a new life.  So far its a 100% placement story!

You can help find the candidates or volunteer to teach.

IDEAL CANDIDATE

The ideal candidate is someone between 18 and 28 Female. In some cases
we can take 17.5 years or 30. We can take few who little older too.
The minimum is 8th standard pass/fail  , but we can have graduates
also – depending on their ‘level’ they benefit , as the course is
designed that way . This is targeted towards poor students who cant
afford a standard spoken english or computer course.  In most houses
there are disillusioned dropouts – and they need some convincing to
attend a full day class. Many will be working somewhere and there is
an ‘opportunity cost’ involved to attend this course. Our experience
is that we should not encourage someone (say a garment factory worker)
to leave the job and join this , as they tend to dropout
anyways.Mobilising is not easy and many dropout in first few weeks ,
till the ‘teacher – student bond’ the emotional contract is achieved.

Around 90-95 % of our students are women , we prefer that way as once
employed the money reaches home:)  However we need some boys as once
students start working they need to work with male colleagues.

Feb 1 2015 Update

Glad to let you know that we are starting LifeDream batch Monday Feb 2 onwards.

The address is

Oasis Breeze, Bangalore
6th Main, D Block, AECS Layout, Kundalahalli

We have managed to get 10 students, Planning to start with them and
hopefully the nos will increase. The area is a prime catchment place
but most of the prospect students are working (we don’t encourage
those who are working to join us, as from our experience they dropout
in month 1 as reality strikes)

Many thanks to Sajin from Oasis Breeze for make it happen so far.

Though you know , a quick recap on the process. Classes are 11 to 4
Monday to Friday and Saturday 10 to 1 . Safina is our full time
trainer – her primary job is to build a bond with the students and
hold the pack for 3 month without letting them dropout. She also
conducts weekly exams and monthly progress tracked . Real learning
will come from volunteers who impart their life experiences in their
own way. There are some pointers but there is no textbook given to
follow as each of them has their own way of teaching.

As the students are adults, the key is to make them ‘learnable’ and
‘enable’ them to seek and get knowledge (TV, Books, Whatever) rather
than we ‘pushing’ knowledge to them. So lots of motivation and pep is
required especially as they come from very difficult family
backgrounds.

The course is FREE but the students commit to a  ‘Gurudakshina’ – to
practice simple environment saving tips and teach 5 more about
environment protection. The team ( lifedream staff and volunteers)
look at it not from a ‘ I am doing charity’ perspective, they gain
deep experience in human transformation . It is a rewarding experience
for all stakeholders. 472 students are transformed and placed so far.

Please spread the word! Specific ask at this stage

1.      Now that we have a hard date lets do a final push on creating
awareness. Need more students. Top concern is this now. Students
should reach site , meet Safina with 2 photographs and age proof

2.      We need volunteers who can come and teach – say 1-2 hrs weekly.
They can pick up any subject from the attached course curriculum and
complete the subject end to end. For example if someone picks ‘Time
Management’, they should get their own props, training material, ideas
etc. and ensure students are taught and the coin gets dropped!  There
is no past teaching experience required or subject matter expertise
required – all you need is empathy. Month 2 onwards the medium is
English, so language should not be an issue. We have the excellent
volunteers who helped students at Evoma Whitefield batch and they
should be able to volunteer too as distance is not very far.