District Institute of International Vocational Education & Career Courses is a a benchmarked accredited institution planned with facilities, resources and processes that can deliver international quality of vocational education, life skills training, and career courses within affordable reach of common youth in the region.

The Institute is designed to impart extensive skills training to the aspiring youth with a quality international curricullum designs, practicals, infrastructure and faculty, and an internationally accredited assessmemnt and certification.

The first model district institute is being set up at Hoshiarpur city district under convergence and synergy of our projects - project ReachOUETE (Reach Out for Education Training & Employment), GlobalPEACE (Global Perspectives through Education & Cultural Exchange), ProSEVA (Promotion of Social Entrepreneurship & Volunteer Action), and, RuralDEVSE (Rural Development through Education, Volunteering & Social Entrepreneurship).

The DIVECC facilities will then also be extended to the other districts of Punjab through 2009-2010, and possibly to other other regions of the country as well in partnerships with partner organisations on the sidelines

A DIVECC will also also co-host facilities pf -

• a School of Personality, Etiquettes & English Development (SPEED),
• an ETE Career Resource Centre, and
• a District level Coordination Centre for e6n VIKAS program
  
  

Need Assessment Overview of the DIVECC
District Institute of Vocational Education & Career Courses

EduCARE India 's northwest regional centre has in the last few years launched a number of projects and programs in the field of community education, development and welfare services. One of these programs titled e6nVIKAS planned under project RuralDEVSE (Rural Development through Education, Volunteering & Social Entrepreneurship) is due for implementation through 2009 to 2014 and needs thousands of young and capable volunteer community care workers in the field to implement various program components.

However, we have been facing a huge challenge to meet our HR needs for this program as a majority of youngsters and their families alike still see social work and community care services as a free time unpaid volunteer social activity for the old and retirees, or, as an accidental passion and a life-calling of a rare few. There is very little we could do that could arouse a sensitivity amongst large number of youth to become a sustainable volunteer for a continuing long time. This attitude is prevalent due to familial, social and prevalent cultural conditioning over a number of years, and would take a generation or a very effective social campaigning to bring a change in attitudes.

Thus, we needed new innovative ways to engage youth in our volunteer initiative to establish an alternative sustainable volunteer social welfare and community service platforms to meet the challenges of the modern day society and the likely future, when our traditional cooperative social security and community services mechanism have largely been eroded across urban and rural settings.

In process of evaluating various ways and means to fill these project HR need-gaps, we also carried out a formal assessment of the trends and patterns of career interest and pathways amongst youth in the region. One of the outcomes was that there were a number of youngsters who wished to take formal vocational and career courses that leads to multiple career options with a high degree of immediate employment probability, or, that enhances their opportunities for a career abroad in developed countries in the near possible future.

We also found out that in the recent past years a large number of youngsters undertook a kind of community service course in the field of nanny care as it was marketed and perceived that there is a high degree of success rate to migrate to Canada as there is a huge demand for such skilled workers.

However, it was noteworthy to find that most of these courses were being conducted in-house by a number of immigration companies, or, even by some shoddy corner business centers without any standard curriculums, controls and awards due to lack of any systems and guidelines for regulation in the industry field. But delivering sub-standard training without any standard curriculums, quality controls and evaluations do have negative long term outcomes. This was demonstrated by the negative remarks on the quality of such training certificates recent past by a Canadian minister in response to reports of lack of standards and ethics shown by poorly trained workers at their workplaces in Canada . He suggested Canadian companies to focus to source out manpower from the southern states in India due to good quality controls and standards of skills training. These poorly trained nanny care workers were given no or very little professional child care experience except few visits to a nursing or children's hospital. This situational analysis also explains that it wasn't the fault of the learners but the low standards of institutional training facilitation.

It is well established that the people in the region do these days value international certifications that enhances their career opportunities abroad in the short or long run. A sizeable chunk of career aspirants will do anything including paying reasonable fee, and, acquiring better skill competencies by working hard at workplace during their field service to enhance their opportunities in a well defined career path abroad.

So we are working to develop and facilitate quality community care and social health programs with international certification standards, and an equally important on the job practical learning experience during and after the courses working in our facilities for our e6n program. This will help trainees to gain appropriate and internationally acceptable skill competencies here in India to help them have greater opportunities for a career abroad as qualified skilled workers to achieve their set objectives. Such a plan will surely benefit all the stakeholders, i.e. the trainees, local communities, EduCARE India , foreign education and training partners, and the foreign communities in need of better trained community workers.

We are also working to develop a “Community Work Career Pathways” and a regional “Association of Social Work & Community Care Workers” (ASW-CCW) for regulatory standards, promotion and advocacy of this profession in partnership with academic, training and HR institutions and organizations from government, Volunteer, and private sector in the region, across India as well as abroad, through our projects ReachOUETE & ProSEVA.

Under this initiative the trainees will undertake certificate and diploma courses in our District Institutes of International Vocational Education and Career Courses (DIVECCs) along with their practical field work in our e6nVIKAS program. We have initially planned to set up 10 to 20 District level DIVECCs in Punjab state in order to train at least 12000 rotational community workers in next 3 to 5 years. Our e6n program facilities will engage the trainees for parallel on the job approved and valid practical skills training and experience.

We will also deliver training focused on the other workplace courses ranging from accounting and applied science to business studies, tourism and hospitality and trade courses, such as cooking, fitter, plumbing and carpentry in extension of our Project ReachOUETE goals. There will be varied categories of courses developed and delivered as:.

1. Autonomous flexible study courses developed by SEVA Centre & ICCCI with global partners.
2. University certified courses in partnership with IDWS
3. Internationally certified courses in partnership with a foreign certifying and awarding body.

The various intended outcomes and benefits of this initiative for different stakeholders include:

•  help those trainees to save money and facilitate better preparation who wish to go for further higher diploma / degree certificates abroad in the related sectors,

•  help those trainees to gain an internationally certified standard professional education as well as documented and real-time work experience in related vocational field in their near home settings, who wish to immigrate to foreign countries as a qualified professional worker,

•  help those trainees gain internationally certified education and on yhe job experience to further develop skills who wish to be a better qualified individual for a family / marriage based immigration as is likely to pick up a suitable job immediately on landing in the skilled category in demand.

•  help those trainees gain internationally certified education and experience who wish to further develop their skills to develop their careers near their home settings with a pssible caeer in our project

•  help EduCARE India with a part rotational and part retained qualified volunteer young manpower as required to meet certain HR needs of the program / project

•  help our international training partner to achieve their rationalised organisational objectives in the region

•  help government for better development of youth services in the region

•  help communities with an access to an integrated sustainable supplementary social welfare and community care platform complementing other government schemes.

•  help foreign organisations to meet their skilled labour shortages in the related projected work areas by sourcing and hiring our trainees having international standards of qualifications and varifiable on the job skills experience

Incidentally some foreign organizations and institutions have shown a willingness to support us in this endeavor. Their role play is to become partners for vocational education and training certification and also for HR development and consulting, and even funding support resources.

Thus, DIVECCs supported by SEVA Centre & ETE Career Resource Centre aims to offer courses in Community Services Work, Home and Community Care and various other high demand skilled work areas in partnership with approved Indian and Foreign training partners and provide limited time foreign trainers who will also facilitate a supplementary course in English language training, Personality & Etiquettes Development and Global Citizenship.

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.  - William Butler Yeats