Vocational Training

Employment and Entrepreneurship Training
“Helping Women Help Themselves”

CCTF firmly believes in empowering women by giving them practical skills and a vision for life. The Employment and Entrepreneurship Training project has already helped 416,000 young women so far.

Background of project:

Women in impoverished rural areas and migrant women, who have left their local communities to seek employment in the cities, form the majority of those facing severe hardship. Many live in squalid conditions since they are without income or working in low paying ‘sweat’ occupations; some turn to prostitution in their desperation to escape poverty. Helping these women to help themselves and their dependents, by providing skill-training to improve access to the labor market and the opportunity in some cases to establish small enterprises, can ameliorate these problems. The role of women as the mainstay of many households in supporting family incomes and in nurturing children is critical and support for women to help themselves become economically active is vital for community stability.

Training provided:

The employment and entrepreneurship training project has provided training opportunities and a variety of support mechanisms to enable women in both rural and urban areas to work towards profitable employment. The diverse interests and various abilities of local women have been taken into account and training for multiple occupations is available. Courses are offered which focus on agricultural techniques, weaving, child care, and hair styling. The training lasts 45 days culminating in an examination upon completion. For one woman to complete the training it costs approximately $220 USD.

The Training Program for Teachers in Rural Area

Introduction:

On Nov. 13, 2006, editors of China Teacher News received a special petition from students and their parents in Zhongzhuang, a impoverished rural village in Gansu Province. In the petition students said, “Students in mountainous areas should enjoy an equal opportunity to obtain an education as those in urban areas. Not only are we aspiring for more knowledge, but we expect there to be adequate teachers in our schools. For no reason, three of our formal teachers have been transferred to other places since the beginning of this semester, which culminated in the suspension of our English lessons. We sincerely hope that leaders at all levels could deal with this problem…”

Background Information:

The number of children in rural areas of China has grown to about 1,600,000,000, including 20,000,000 “left-behind” ones whose parents seek employment in the big cities. According to the latest statistics, the total number of rural teachers is around 8,000,000. Students in rural areas can hardly enjoy sound opportunities to study new information given the unsatisfactory qualifications of their teachers and the myriad of external limits such as the lack of new teaching mediums and the poor wages offered to teachers in these poorer districts. Central to this thorny problem is the concern about how to re-allocate educational resources in a more reasonable and effective way within the existing confines and to improve the overall quality of education in rural areas. In this broad context CCTF’S training program for teachers in rural areas could play a significant role in solving this urgent problem by both enhancing the quality of these teachers and mitigating the unfavorable external limits placed upon them.

Problems of the teachers in Chinese rural areas and their impact on educational quality:

• severe shortage of formal teachers with the phenomena of unqualified substitutes prevalent.
• the inadequate professional knowledge of rural teachers, characterized by an overwhelming concentration on Chinese and mathematics with little or no emphasis on other important subjects such as arts and sciences.
• the low level of overall teacher quality, which manifests itself mainly in their limited methods of instruction and close-mindedness.
• instability of the teaching staff, with better educated teachers often leaving rural areas for higher paying jobs in larger cities.
• unreasonableness of age structure. Simply put, there are too many old teachers.

Objectives:

• help teachers in poor rural areas understand the importance of their work and kindle enthusiasm for this work through psychological guidance.
• perfect the knowledge structure and enhance the professional educational skills of these teachers through effective, individually tailored training.
• improve the interactive skills of teachers towards children and help them develop in a multi-dimensional way through professional training about children’s psychology.
• improve education in poor rural areas and strive for more resources in order to bring rural education on par with urban education.

Housekeeping Training

Xu Jinju’s Story
Born in a poor family, Xu Jinju, a young woman of Li County, Gansu Province came to Beijing in the hope of seeking a job in this metropolis after graduation from secondary school, has been working in Beijing Ainong Housekeeping Company as housekeeping personnel since 2006. For these years of work she has been consciously aware of and haunted by the limited education of herself, particularly the professional theoretical knowledge concerning her job which has been always hindering the development of her future career, although she has received thumbs-up from those for whom she worked due to her persistent hard work.

On November 25th, 2007, fortunately, she participated in the free training program of housekeeping held by CCTF and expanded her horizon through learning the essentially vocational skills and indispensable information for her own job this training courses offered, shedding light on the work approach she should pursue. During the ten-day training courses, she has received comprehensive instructions in such areas as 1) comity and ethnics, 2) high-level cooking, 3) health-care for lying-in women including postnatal recovery, arrangements for nutritive meals, psychological guidance and so forth, 4) nursing for infants consisting of daily care, feeding, potential exploration and treatment for common diseases, and 5) family sanitation as well as basic knowledge of laws.

This powerful training program of housekeeping by CCTF was most significantly characterized by its close interaction between theory and practice. During the training everyone was involved in hands-on operations on how to follow the instructions while at the same time the whole class could explore more constructive ways for further intensive applications in an all-round way.

Graduating from the training program,

Ji Mingyan's Story

Ji Mingyan, a mother coming from a remote township of the Northeast. At present, she is a house keeping worker of Beijing Tianzhitianli House Keeping Company.

Her family was very poor, having old and sick generation, school-kid and a very sick husband with chronic disease. In order to feed my family members, she came to Beijing to work.Because she did not receive formal training, she could only do ordinary house-keeping. She was forced to quit the job, because of having no knowledge of house-keeping.

Fortunately, she was chosen to take part in the first house-keeping training class by the Safe and Healthy Growth Training Center of China Children and Teenagers’ Fund free of charge, including free food and boarding. Through the training, she mastered the knowledge and skills.The training has changed her concept of living.

In 2007, she was awarded outstanding house-keeper by our company. Her salary was raised to 2500 RMB yuan. The technical training has changed her fate and improved the standard of living of her family.