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- Self Employment - the need of the day:
* A development project for the socially, intellectually and economically poor of the society.
* An ancillary to industries to cut down the cost of production.
* The solution to the unemployment problem.
* An opportunity for the underprivileged school dropouts to earn an honest living.
* A scheme to benefit the physically handicapped.
* An opportunity for girls and women who could not make any head way in education.
* An answer to the economic problems of the poor, through income-generating schemes.
* The proper utilization of the National Financial resources left at the disposal of the weaker sections.
* A self reliant all round formation to face the challenges of a competitive world of industry.
* A viable project that everyone can support.
* An opportunity for industries to show concern for the needy.
* A means for women to augment and sustain family.
- An inspiration from the documents of the 20th General Chapter of the Salesian Society shakes up any one when we read the tragic situation of the young in the poorer quarters which enumerates the peripheral poverty, which is a process by which individuals and groups, already wounded in their material and social existence, are little, by little rejected by the economic and political circles, to the point of being excluded from society, to which they belong. Pushed to its logical conclusion, this peripheral poverty becomes the poverty of exclusion, a miserable state of affairs, brought about by the accumulation of the various factors of poverty, and yet the world wants to clear this situation. But who will do it when each one falls in line with the writings of Leo Tolstoy: I sit on a man's back choking him, and making him carry me and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by any means possible, except getting off his back.
- What are these burdens of poverty which millions of children and young people are the victims of? The poor and abandoned youth is the one who so far as education is concerned, has remained illiterate, who not being qualified for any professional work, cannot be employed and if employed, is the lowest paid, who has the minimum possibility of having a decent accommodation, the one in whom the lack of material goods and culture the continued shame and humiliation have killed any kind of creative responsibility and any interest in values who feels himself excluded from any active part in society and who has no voice in public affairs.
- The tragic consequences of poverty in these youth, in a word prevent them from becoming men and women. Today large groups of young people and children can no longer live their youth, because they are immediately integrated into the production system or exploited by it by the threat of survival or death. They pass directly from childhood to adulthood. It can be stated that the greater number of these people between the age groups of 14 and 25 have never been young and will never see that day.
- Mahatma Gandhi said: The earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs but not for every man's greed.
- Each country, each nation has its own problems. In a developing country, the ill-equipped youth pose the biggest problem to the progress and unity of the country. Hence I feel that each one in his/her own place of work, ought to be exposed to this reality of the youth. The developed world is today educating their children for relaxation and recreation, while the developing and poor countries are educating their children for learning technology to sustain oneself.
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- Facts and figures, which should stir any mind that has youth as its pre-occupation:
* Unemployment rate will continue to worsen.
* India's labour force will reach 369 million mark in 1995.
* 80% of children drop out of schools before they reach class X and are left ill-equipped to face the world. They are part of a world where the day is as dark as night, and the night is pitch dark. They are doomed to physical mental retardation. They live in an under world below the poverty line where some 400 millions of our country men live in abject misery and massive poverty. They live in the slums of our cities and in the huts of our villages. They live to work and they die when they can work no longer though India has faced many challenges and solved many problems during the past 47 years of independence, she is still a problem-ridden country.
* 2/3rds of its countrymen live below the poverty line.
* 60% of its population is illiterate.
* 50% of the world's illiterate are found in India, they are in the age group of 15 to 19.
* Of those who care to enrol at the primary stage, only 15% to 20% manage to muddle through school.
* 300,000 ITI trained boys are jobless.
* It is found that of the initial 18.9 million who enrolled during 1965-66, 16 million dropped out before class X. This comes to 84.8%, similarly of the 19.5 million who enrolled during 1966-67 in class 1, 16.6 million dropped out by 1975-76. This comes to about 85% and of the 19.7 million who enrolled during 1967-68, 16 million dropped out by 1976-77. This comes to about 81%.
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