What is Unique About SMS?
What is Unique About SMS?
Methodologies of Training
SEWA Manager Ni School focuses on the needs and interests of its members. Alternative learning methods, such as video training in native languages, interactive activities and simple diagrams are used to educate non-literate and semi-literate women skills needed to upgrade the trainee’s enterprises.The training takes place at convenient times and locations so that daily wage earners or home-based workers do not have to sacrifice wages or disrupt their family schedule. The trainers are experts in their subjects, most are graduates of SEWA Manager Ni School. The trainers and trainees come from similar backgrounds that foster learning based on experience. The courses are designed sensitive to social and economic situations, thereby ensuring the trainings are demand driven and contextual.
SMS builds training modules with the trainees in mind, as the typical academic structure is not always compatible with the learning styles of the trainees. SMS employs various methods, from short films to simple diagrams, as educational tools for members who are semi-literate or illiterate. The trainees come from a range of economic activities: small and marginal farmers, agriculture workers, saltpan workers, and home-based workers. The use of interactive exercises and practical case studies engage trainees, even using examples of trainee’s own enterprises. In this way the trainings are tailored to members needs in their livelihoods and interests. SMS is the only training institute in India, which works towards building the capacities of the micro enterprises of the informal sector workers. SMS has acquired the niche in providing trainings and empowering the rural poor.
Flexible to Members’ Schedule
Our Master Trainers
For many SMS trainees their work place is the home or in their villages. SEWA members are artisans, garment workers, bidi rollers, agarbatti workers or waste pickers etc. Leaving their work for long periods of time would disrupt their day-to-day earnings. SMS has therefore offered these trainings at convenient locations- in their local Community Learning Centres or in the central Ahmedabad classrooms or even below a tree in the village. SMS has also organized the trainings for only a few hours a day, so that the trainees can continue to earn their daily wages.
The trainers are expert in their fields and typically have experience from SEWA. Many trainers have been trained by SMS and provide examples of how they applied their training to their personal enterprises. The SMS trainees can therefore relate to the trainers’ experiences and see the real-world application of the skills they are learning.