VKC: Making students job providers

Thiruvananthapuram, Aug 20 (UNI) Aimed at moulding students into job providers instead of employment seekers, the Village Knowledge Centres (VKC) in Kerala schools have given a new meaning to education in the state.

The Kerala Chapter of the Confederation of NGOs of Rural India (CNRI) and the P N Panicker Vigyan Vikas Kendra along with the other development agencies have embarked on a new venture for developing skills of children and equipping them to face the challenges of unemployement.

The centres aim at a holistic development of the entire community by providing vocational training and organising awareness programmes through Information and Communication Technology (ICT) on group farming, water conservation, rural infrastructure development, health, environment and socio-economic issues, P N Panicker Vigyan Vikas Kendra Vice Chairman N Balagopal said.

The targeted groups are students from class VIII to X and their parents, he added.

''We want to promote the concept of 'Earn while learning' among children through the centre and desire the children to be job creators and not job seekers,'' Mr Balagopal told UNI.

The VKCs revolve around the school libraries. They were envisaged to be scientific knowledge centres where practical knowhow could be gained through simple experiments.

The Parent-Teacher Associations, in collaboration with other NGOs and Self Help Groups in the area, had a major role to play in this.

In addition, the children would be trained on the lines of Gandhian school of economics, he said.

As a pilot project, the VKC had been started in six schools in Attingal and Kanhangad educational districts and by 2008 the project would be extended to 100 more schools, he said adding ''our goal is to open 1,000 more such centres, one in each panchayat by 2010.'' The Union Ministries of Science and Technology and Rural Development, which funded the project, would provide Rs 11 lakh to each centre for the five-year project, he said.

Mr Balagopal said the centre had also identified some areas for conducting the training programme which include handicrafts and toy making, beauty and health care, fashion designing, cost-effective building technology, manufacture of honey-cola, toothpaste and extending tele-medicine and treatment services.

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