The MET League of Colleges is a conglomerate of premiere educational institutions, driven by a singleminded focus on imparting quality education to make students sharp.
MET's commitment to impart value-based education across all levels of society that has catapulted it to an NGO in Special Consultative Status with the United Nations (ECOSOC). The institution has carved a niche for itself amongst the premiere educational institutes in the country.
At MET we have a dedicated cell MET Seva for social outreach programmes where we try to help underprivileged strata of society by providing them support through various activities. The root cause of poverty is unemployment, underemployment and lack of educational opportunities. We are trying to identify their skills and provide training to sharpen them so that they can earn a decent amount to prevent their migration to cities. Hence, revival of tribal arts and providing livelihood to tribals is one of the various activities under MET Seva.
The objective of MET Seva is to create institutional architecture that is both enabling and empowering for the poor to access better livelihoods and improve their standards of living through identifying and implementing innovative programmes.
With the help of students we are identifying, supporting and promoting innovations and scalable interventions for empowering the underprivileged. Our plan is to create an ecosystem for social entrepreneurship and encourage sustainable, scalable and measurable livelihoods so that the problem of poverty and underemployment can be addressed with minimum capital requirement and maximum impact.
Projects undertaken by MET Seva - Vocational training / programmes:
Understanding the needs of the tribals is of utmost importance to identify innovative and developmental opportunities for them with bringing a positive change in their lives. We believe in building responsible citizens by creating conducive environment for them to realize their talent and strength and grow in all areas.
Under MET Seva, few villages have been adopted for their holistic development through students involvement in social upliftment programmes. People in these villages are poor because of unemployment due to lack of skills and competencies. People are idle due to absence of work to improve their financial condition. It’s a vicious circle of poverty which results in poor education, poor health, poor earning capacities and migration to cities for opportunities. Women are free after their day-to-day work. Women may get some opportunities for farm labours which is not year around hence it is not sustainable.
Hence focus of this organisation is to provide vocational training and employment opportunities to rural and tribal youth and women to empower them. MET students are encouraged to take up responsibility of such projects. Students had conducted a survey to identity requirement of trained people in adjacent areas to start right vocational training programme to cater that requirement.
Our strategy is divided into two focus areas
1) Life Skills Education
Through the social businesses we are guiding, training and employing them by providing skill development opportunities and helping to get selected by the neighbouring industry or equip so as to help them to start their own business. This is already being done from 2009-10, so far 200 women are trained out of which 60% are tribal/rural and 40% are urban. Every year we are increasing the count by 35%- 50%, this trend will continue.
2) Collaborative Development
A desired change is brought about by the supportive efforts of many dedicated and passionate individuals/institutions who demonstrate excellence in team work. Our open and collaborative culture driven by mutual respect and value for people has been the prime element to create a platform where we can unite and work for the eradication of rural poverty.
Supporting Warli Art
The Warlis or Varlis are an indigenous tribe or Adivasis, living in mountainous as well as coastal areas of Maharashtra-Gujarat border and surrounding areas. They have their own animistic beliefs, life, customs and traditions. The Warlis speak an unwritten Varli language which belongs to the southern zone of the Indo-Aryan languages and the union territories of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu.
The Warlis carry on a tradition stretching back to 2500 or 3000 BC. Their extremely rudimentary wall paintings use a very basic graphic vocabulary: a circle, a triangle and square. Their paintings were monosyllabic. The circle and triangle come from their observation of nature; the circle representing the sun and the moon, the triangle derived from mountains and pointed trees.
The Warli art is losing its value among the tribe itself due to modernisation and lack of resources. These artists are not earning enough to support their families, they are facing challenges for survival in the 21st century, so gradually they are diverting to other means of livelihood.
We at MET under the MET Seva are supporting such artists and trying to revive the art by giving training to the young generation mainly women. The objective is to provide them a platform to express their talent and give them opportunity to earn from their skills. The products are entirely made by them and the revenue is directly going to them. This will prevent migration of such tribal people to cities for odd jobs such as construction work where women labours are working almost 14 hours for only Rs.100.
©Mumbai Educational Trust, All rights reserved | Last Modified Date: Thursday, November 21st, 2024
