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Getting into communication mode.

Ambar Singh Roy

Tashaba Tanvir is a second year English Honours student studying in a college affiliated to Calcutta University. She is currently undertaking a course that will groom her for a career in the BPO industry. The course, she is confident, will help her achieve “functional excellence through effective communication”.

Her fellow course-mate, Nuzhat Parveen, thought till the other day that she would be unable to pursue her education due to problems on the family front.

Today, she is determined to join the BPO industry and realise her dream of becoming a software engineer.

First year Bachelor of Computer Applications student Md Shadaab Alam says “communication skills are very important for career development. Only this will enable me to express what I wish to, appropriately. This course is addressing this need”.

Alam’s friend Ibrahim Parvez has become more confident since he has joined the BPO course.

The aspirations of all these youngsters would never have a chance of being fulfilled but for an initiative taken jointly by the Department of Minority Development of the West Bengal Government, The Minorities Development Financial Corporation of West Bengal, the State (West Bengal) Haj Committee and Hero Mindmine Institute Ltd, the training and consulting arm of the Hero Group of companies.

Hero Mindmine Institute has designed short-term modules for call centre and soft skills development training for Urdu and Bengali-speaking minorities. A total of 3,500 selected students “with practically zero communication skills” will be provided 50-hours of training each, in batches.

The programme has been so designed that, at the end of it, students are equipped with skills that will enable them to take up jobs in sunrise service sectors, such as ITES/BPO and the retail space, according to Amit Goenka, Channel Manager of the Hero Mindmine Institute in Kolkata. Classes are held at the Haj House between 4 p.m. and 7 p.m. every day.

The training programme assumes significance in view of the support it has received from the State Haj Committee, which favours the empowerment of womenfolk belonging to the minority committee.

For the students, the course comes free of charge. The West Bengal Minorities Development Financial Corporation has provided a subsidy of Rs 1.7 lakh to cover the cost of course material. “For us at Hero Mindmine, it is a corporate social responsibility project. The success of the programme will invigorate us to replicate the initiative in other locations across the State,” says Goenka.

ambar_singhroy@rediffmail.com

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