THE TIME OF MY LIFE..XXI...Concluding training tales

 Another socially purposeful assignment was at the Traffic Police Training Institute for traffic Inspectors. Most often, it is left behind in the conference rooms and people get back to their same old habits. My experience tells me that most organisations do not treat employee training in behavioural  aspects as important. There is no training strategy which benefits individuals to change attitudes. That could be because most professionals handling this portfolio, are academic and go through the process in a theoretical way, fitting people into slots and serving the same chicken soup for the soul even if it is a strict vegetarian ! Some treat it as part of statistics to beef up training man – hours while some more want to use up the allotted budgets and invite their buddies in the business to help them spend it. Very rarely is there a genuine attempt to use training as a change agent for the good of the employee and ultimately the organisation. The first thing that is hit when there is dip in business, is Training while that is the best    time to use it to pump up the adrenalin.

Sabhapathy was a training officer in the SC/ST Coaching and Guidance Centre. We were members of the Inter Media Publicity Co- ordination Committee and I was impressed with his passion for advancement of SC/ST students. When he requested me to  be a visiting faculty . I readily agreed. Every Wednesday , I took training sessions for unemployed SC/ST youth, on self employment opportunities and confidence building .It  was a very meaningful interaction and we could have achieved wonders, but for the cruel blow of death which deprived the Centre of Sabhapathy. He succumbed to cancer. His successors have not pursued his mission so that was the end of my association with the organisation which functions under the Ministry of Labour.

For obvious reasons, I am only writing about the out of the ordinary groups and the last of them I feature is the capacity building workshop conducted for consumer activists from all over India. This was put together by my friends Mukta and Shivanand , a trainer couple. They invited me to handle a session on information skills and it was a rewarding exercise.

A different experience came my  way when I attended a Training for Trainers workshop conducted by International Labour Organisation. This was for trainers from India, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Katmandu, in  women enterprise development . My friend Madhura Chatrapathy, Founder of AWAKE (Association of women entrepreneurs in Karnataka) fielded me as a participant from AWAKE. For a change, I was on the other side of the platform , getting trained. It kind of formalised my ‘tripping’ into training and now I can also flaunt a certificate to prove I am a trainer!