This year we celebrated the graduation of 81 learners - primarily women and girls - from our Basis Learning Centres in Bangalore! Equipped with computer knowledge (including hardware and internet safety) and strong touch typing and MS Office skills, many of the women who have been working as day labourers or maids are able to find work that pay triple or quadruple the monthly wages they have been earning. You can imagine the ripple effect of this improvement; where it was a struggle (or an impossibility) to send children to school, pay for school uniforms or books, there is now a more solid foundation from which to tackle these and other costs. James Ambat from Family Development Services, Basis' new partner, shares the kind of difference this skilling opportunity has particularly for the mothers participating in the program:
The women in our neighbourhood have found a way to to learn something that can give them wings to fly.
This has given them dignity, financial independence, and value in their family.
We see this program as a way to break the generational curse of poverty,
and to move from darkness into light.
We are always struck by the transformation of our learners. Their increased confidence, their newfound shoulders-back postures, their smiles! In place of self-doubt, and certainly in place of despair, they beam with hope.
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