Prodigee Foundation is a grass root voluntary organization based out of Mumbai and formed in 2007 by a group of teaching professionals committed towards development of women and girl child from the urban slums of India.
What spurred and appalled the founders of Prodigee Foundation was the complete lack of literacy amongst the women in the slums of Mumbai and growing female infanticide in urban India. Coupled with this was the increase in male-female ratio from 53 to 47.
Assume a situation that there is an emergency in the village where the married woman of the house hails from and some money is needed urgently for hospitalization of her father. The woman is distraught and is highly worried on how to send money to her family. She has to necessarily wait for her husband to return from work or call him at his work and he may not like to be disturbed. How does the woman dispatch money to her family? She needs understanding and some knowledge on how to transfer money through money order to her village. But no one has taught her, nor has she seen any need to learn through a visit the post office; thus, she is not able to provide timely help to her family. Prodigee foundation educates her on practical activities and basic knowledge needed in today's world.
Prodigee Foundation reaches out to bridge a burning need in her to assert herself as a woman and shares its experience in improving her livelihood. The objective is to enable her through vocational skills training in contemporary areas, which will ensure that she is able to convert her learning into an earning function.
In addition, the foundation strives to bring about a change in the women through improving her imagery by
- Infusing self confidence through cues and internal realization of self and self worth through training programs.
- Literacy development through learning to read and write in vernacular where necessary
- Train the woman to speak write and read in English enabling her to effectively communicate with external exigencies.
- Prodigee emphasizes on internal realization and recognition of one's potential through exploratory cues rather than the traditional methods of lectures.
The overall desire of the foundation is to convert a caterpillar into a butterfly.
The key result area of Prodigee Foundation for women and girl Child are:
- Training and Development in Vocational Skills
- Mentoring activities of the dwellers
- Hand holding on creation of Micro Enterprises
- To ensure earning of Rs. 2500 at least, per month.
Some of the Vocational skills training provided are:
- Beauty treatment- Helping the trained women visit individual women's home in the neighborhood and conduct beauty treatment
- Embroidery – Develop creative work at home, as job work for garment factories
- Cooking – Cuisines sent in the Dabba system for the neighboring offices
- Baking – Chocolate, Cakes & Cookies
- Jewelry – Simple jewelry setting as job work
- Stitching – As per job order to stitch garments for garment factories
- Phenyl making,
- Agarbatti making,
- Computer skills
- Pot making & Handicrafts
- Flower Making
- Candle Making
- Paper Craft – Paper Bags, Paper Boxes etc
Mentoring on entrepreneurship
Apropos our training of two phases in self confidence and vocational skills enhancement, Prodigee Foundation mentors her to becoming a small entrepreneur by providing information on various schemes for funding, assists in setting up stalls in various exhibitions and fairs where ever applicable. In addition we provide information about our activities and services in various forums to drive traffic to their enterprises. Job work referrals are also provided.
Our centre’s are at
- Dharavi (Dharavi main road in Ground floor Prabhudwa Samtha chs , opp. Sion station.)
- Gilbert Hill slums Andheri west ( Balwadi, Gilbert hill road, next to beat police station)
- Ashankur Holy Family Welfare Centre at Andheri east (Near Chakala signal, Andheri Kurla road)
- Chakala High Road, Opp. cigarette factory
How we measure our effectiveness
- Post training in soft skills development, 360 degree measurement of changes seen in her
- Vocational skills training and conversion of successfully passed out students into micro entrepreneurs
- Ensure the woman’s earning are consolidated at around Rs 2500 or above, per month.