Vocational Training & Self Help Groups

In order to financially empower rural villagers, the Ashram is providing training in tailoring, organic-crop production, sandal-making and other vocations as well as helping villagers to form and maintain cooperative businesses.

As part of Jan Shikshan Sansthan (JSS), a project managed by the Government of India, the Ashram provides vocational training in Idukki, Kerala and in Sivakasi, Tamil Nadu. Through JSS, villagers are provided with training in everything from candlestick making to computer science.

Another program run by the Ashram is Amrita Sree (Amrita Self-Reliance Employment & Empowerment Program). Through Amrita Sree, the Ashram helps unemployed and deprived people become self-reliant, assisting them in creating their own small-scale businesses, making culinary and household items and selling them door-to-door. This program is currently running in Kerala, and soon will be started in Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh as part of the Ashram’s Farmer Suicide Prevention Program.

In Kerala and Tamil Nadu, the Ashram is further stimulating employment and encouraging interest in environmental protection in rural villages through Amrita Development Activities. It has established three medicinal-plant reserves, a high-density farming project to produce banana and tuber crops, as well as a horticulture nursery to stimulate interest in home-gardening.

Along these lines, the Ashram has also established eight satellite-aided Village Resource Centres in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. In 2006, the Math began helping villagers in Kollam District to form Self Help Groups (SHGs). Three hundred such groups have been formed thus far. Local leaders and community groups establish appropriate micro-businesses based on village trades. One of the main aims of the SHGs is to empower with women through self-employment. Organic banana production has begun in five villages, providing work for 100 families, and the first homestead organic-vegetable-gardening projects began with the distribution of seeds to 5,000 families in Kollam.