austraLasia #1790

Church-run Technical Training Center Offers Industry Skills
The following report is by the UCA News Agency - our readers may be interested in it

LAHORE, (UCAN) 17th March 2007 -- Mohammad Waqar prefers studying and improving his skills to his previous job as a mechanic and the verbal abuse that came with it.
"Scolding was the bonus I got, along with the daily salary of 10 rupees, (US$0.17) for a hard day's work of 12 hours in a street workshop," he said. "Now I am more than a chotu," he added. The term for "boy: carries the same subservient sense it has in English when used for a male who is not a child.
    Waqar, 19, told UCA News he came to the Don Bosco Technical and Youth Center after a cousin studying at the center recommended it. He is one of five Muslims who study at the center alongside 115 Christian youths. They range in age from 15 to 22.
    The centre, run by the Salesians of Don Bosco, opened in 2000 with 10 Catholic boarding students. Since then it has graduated 120 young men.
    Spread over an area the equivalent of three football fields, the center offers technical skills to youths, most of whom dropped out of school, as Waqar did. It is off the main road, in the quiet southern outskirts of Lahore 270 kilometers southeast of Islamabad.
    "For many of them, this is the last chance to receive any education at all," Salesian Father Miguel Angel Ruiz, the center's principal, told UCA News as he watched Waqar and other young men work on a car engine. The Spanish priest, in charge since 2002, describes his mission as one of service to poor youths.
    The centre has expanded from one to four technical trades: automotive, electrical, metalwork, and air conditioning and refrigeration. Students in its two-year program learn skills in each of these trades.
    We produce skilled manpower, instead of a person with limited knowledge, to respond to (Pakistan's) annual need for 1 million skilled workers in local industries," Father Ruiz said.
    In the mornings, the young men study classroom subjects such as math, technical drawing, English and Urdu, the national language. After lunch, they change and head for the well-equipped workshops.
    Catholic youths can stay in the centre's hostel. The charge is 500 rupees a month including tuition. Non-boarding students are charged 350 rupees.
    Finding money to cover the center's operating costs is a challenge, Father Ruiz said, so the centre has a couple of projects that put the skills of its students to work even before they graduate.
    Second-year metalworking classes now produce 140 beds and 196 tables a month, and these are sold to help defray costs.
    Currently, the students are working to supply 1,200 beds and 200 dining tables for survivors of the October 2005 earthquake. They are needed for a housing project Salesians started in November 2005 in Manu Jabra, a mountainous northern area. The initiative came about after a local hakim, a physician without formal qualifications, asked for help at a Salesian medical rehabilitation camp in Abbotabad, close to the epicenter of the quake.
    The Lahore centre, which employs three licensed engineers, also has been blessed with volunteer help. Graduate Aliyas Mushtaq offers introductory classes in electrical theory, and Waheed Nobel, a Salesian seminarian, teaches English.
Students admire the school's stress on family and social values. Tools are never locked in cupboards, according to Paras Masih, a Catholic student in his final year, who also said he cannot remember any instance of theft. "I bring the same trust and confidence back home," Paras told UCA News. His parents considered him "good for nothing after I left school in grade five," at the age of 11, he said.
    For Father Ruiz, 34, the educational gap among the youths is a major problem. "The level of understanding differs between those who have attended grade 10 and a big group who have not even reached grade eight," he explained. Last year 50 percent of the students were disqualified from apprenticeship training for not meeting the minimum required academic standard.
    The centre is trying to tailor itself to meet industry's needs. It registered with the Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (TEVTA) in 2005. TEVTA is the nation's biggest network of polytechnic and vocational-training institutions.
It is a challenge meeting that standard, the priest acknowledged. But he has greater hope for the future, because a middle school, up to grade eight, will start operating in 2009 on the premises.
    For many other young men, the training already offers hope. "Thanks to the center, I can get a job as a trained technician at any factory to work respectably in any trade," Waqar said.
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