Page:SELECTED ESSAYS of Dr. S. S. KALBAG.pdf/279

 ﻿________________

staff was supported through DST core support till 2003. Then onwards, Asha for Education – Seatle chapter started supporting salary of DBRT staff. Number of students enrolled for DBRT course each year at Pabal increased from 19 in 2003 to 36 in 2009. Apart from DBRT, VA conducts various short term courses on poultry, fabrication, wireman, electrical appliances repair, computers etc Normally NGOs willing to start training on similar lines sponsor candidates for DBRT. Every year we get students from all over India, So far, we have students coming from Madhya Pradesh, Gujrat, Assam, Orissa, Nagaland, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh and of course Maharashtra. ‘Learning while doing' approach overcomes language barrier and 'Work becomes the medium of education'. At VA's Pabal campus, teaching and learning takes place in Marathi, Hindi and English. A year long stay at ashram leads to transformation of personality of students and multi-skill training makes them suitable for variety of jobs. Learning in real life gives them confidence to undertake tasks. Since 2005, we started the practice of placement of DBRT students with our alumni entrepreneurs and other enterprises. Most of the students get placed before they complete their final examination. After getting some experience many students start their own enterprises. A survey of our alumni of the last 7 years was undertaken with support of Lend-a-hand-India, a US based non-profit organization. It showed that 36% of our alumni started their own business, 48% got into employment and the rest were pursuing further education. It was found that 71% of alumni were doing work related to the skills + Rural Development Through Education System 266