Empowering the disabled stand on their feet, the NGO way

City-based NGO Enable India, which was recently selected to work as the ‘placement cell’ for the State department for the empowerment of differently-abled and senior citizens to train and place persons with disabilities, completed the first batch of training on Wednesday.

Out of 35 persons with various disabilities like vision challenge, hearing impairment and physical disability trained in the first batch, nearly 24 have been recruited by various corporates like Total Mall, Shell and KFC, the NGO said.

“We’ve been holding training programmes from the unskilled to the skilled level since 1999,” said Pranesh Nagri, honorary director of Enable India.

A few of the trainees will continue further training in computers with the prospect of being recruited by IBM, Nagri said.

The NGO has been given a target to train up to 1,000 persons in the next one year and place at least 50 per cent of them.

Public sector

Besides corporates, the trainees will be placed in public sector undertakings and establishments across the industry. The trainings are skill-focused and employers are made to understand that they can recruit disabled persons only on requirement basis.

“We make it clear that this is not charity and the companies can recruit them if they are satisfied with their skills. The idea of this exercise is to ensure dignified living of persons with disabilities,” Nagri said.

Dipesh Sutariya, co-founder of Enable India, explained that the organisation had different kinds of training models.

“First, we train them based on specific job profiles in different corporates. We also have generic training which helps us create an employee pool for the recruiters. We analyse job profiles where persons with disabilities can contribute more effectively and help the employers with role adjustments,” he said.

Centres

The NGO is also working with various telecom companies to set up call centres manned by persons with disabilities and is said to have made progress with at least one telecom major.

Besides the department for empowerment of differently abled persons, which finances the project, Enable India is partnering with RUDSETI (institutes under the Ministry of Rural Development) that provide infrastructural support.

“Eventually, through RUDSETI and other channels, we would like to take the employability training to other states in the country and would like many organisations to join us in the initiative,” Sutariya said.

Besides Bangalore, the employability training will be conducted in all revenue divisions of