Kangan: For this remote and landlocked town of Central Kashmir, the Don Bosco training centre stationed here is ushering the new directions to the estranged youth.  From hospitality to retail marketing, the training centre in last three years of its existence has trained nearly six hundred semi literate youth who are donning their mettle across country in various capacities of growing corporate sector.

Aamir Wani was also one among these hundreds of estranged youth who was imparted with the training in hospitality sector before being offered the job in India’s leading chain of restaurant-Barbeque nations to earn his livelihood.

“For a while there was no hope that I will ever earn a decent living. I was stuck amid this landlocked valley where people work in fields or as porters during tourist season to sustain,” Wani recalls his earlier days. “Life changed for better in just three months after I joined the Db tech centre at main town where I was offered training in hospitality sector and subsequently placed at Barbeuqe nation.”

 Like Wani, the centre has placed over six hundred trainees in BPO industry, retail marketing and hospitality sector so far.  

“The way people respond to our efforts is quite encouraging. There was resistance initially since people attributed our work to anti social activities for placing girls outside town and asking boys to change their attire and dress style to meet the requirements of hospitality industry,” observes centre coordinator, Syed Nageena                 Qadri . “Now things are considerably changed and people plead us to take their wards for same training as they realized our intentions and efforts”.

 The centre is offering job opportunities to those youth who have quit their studies midway or have never been to school in their life. Except being manual labors, the centre coordinator said that acquiring the decent jobs for this dejected lot is very difficult.

“Presently in the growing corporate sector there is a huge competition and needs presentable skills to ensure maximum sales or customer satisfaction. These trainees lack all that when they join us,” said Nageena.

She claims despite all these hurdles, the Don Bosco centre ensures that these trainees are properly trained with the support of communication trainer for presentable skills to satisfy the customer besides to fetch his or her needs.

“Moreover, we also train them in a particular domain with in-depth subject knowledge so that they will not suffer during job.” 

Every batch, Nageena said is started with the community mobilization in which the trainers travel into the remote and far flung areas and urge local representatives, panchayat heads and politicians to send their wards for the training to the centre. She said during this attempt they are properly educated about the motive and purpose of this centre. After that according to the interests of trainee we put him/her in same domain and train for three months and offer him little financial support every month since he would not feel burden on his parents,” she said.

“After his successful training of three months, we ensure he is placed in any well established company or organization to earn his decent living. And we continuously track him after placement till he is satisfied and accustomed to the outside conditions. Mostly the youth here are home sick and needs extra care,” adds another senior trainer of the centre Mushtaq Rafiqi.

Owing to ignorance and illiteracy, another senior trainer, Showkat Ahmad said that they need extra efforts to win the trust of people in a socially conservative setup.

 “This is economically downtrodden hamlet where people have least means of livelihood. Most of our trainees have never been to Srinagar city and they visit their first time with us as part of their training programme. Once the trust is built things naturally become easy for us later,” he said.

The employers of Kangan DB Tech includes Kohli Brothers, V-Mart, Sarovar Portiga, Mummy Please fast food and restaurant, Peaks Restaurant and many others in Kashmir. It employs its trainees at Barbeque nation, Competent Synergy and many others at national level.