ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT
Without a regular source of income, life is difficult and unpredictable. In Varnasi district 60% of the men and 93% of the women are either unemployed or under-employed (source - 2001 census of India). With a more reliable source of income, many other development issues can be addressed, and families can begin to consider life beyond just survival. We are addressing employment issues from two sides: we provide job-specific training to make people more employable, and we are opening companies and providing micro-capital for others to open companies to draw more employment into the area.
SADHU: WASHERMAN TO MANAGER
Sadhu is from the dhobi, or washerman caste. He like his father before him, used to wash clothes by hand in the river charging a few cents per piece. He also would iron clothes for customers – almost like a dry-cleaning service would do. This was low paying work with lots of competition from other caste members. Frequently customers would refuse to pay for various reasons. After Sadhu became a follower of Jesus he took a job with a Catholic guest house, washing sheets and cleaning rooms. At the time he was hosting a small Bible study at his home. When persecution of Christians by the Hindu fundamentalists began to heat up, the Catholic priest in charge of the guest house asked him to close the bible study, fearing that the Hindus, who knew Sadhu worked there, might blame him. When he refused, he lost this job.
After a few months of hard times, we hired him at The Pure Water Company. Though he was literate, he was almost completely unskilled, but he was willing to work at anything. He cleaned chemical containers in the beginning. In a short while he learned to drive the delivery trolley, and later he learned how to re-charge water softeners. Through the years that Sadhu has faithfully served at The Pure Water Company he has learned almost all of the technical jobs at the company. He is especially skilled at training younger employees to do these jobs.
About 18 months ago I asked Sadhu to co-manage the service side of the business with one other employee. The job includes managing the daily schedules of 10 other employees, scheduling service appointments for hundreds of customers, scheduling the delivery of thousands of bottles of water, collecting and accounting for all of the money generated from these services, and maintaining all of the equipment used for this part of the work. He was very hesitant at first to accept such responsibility. Now he is a confident, efficient service manager handling all of these responsibilities with ease.
As he was learning skills, he was also being discipled. Through Bible studies, prayer times and a lot of one-on-one teaching he has grown to be a strong, mature believer. He now leads his own church of about 30 people. He has also helped to start 4 other churches in rural areas on his days off. He has become a leader in The Pure Water Company, a respected leader in the Christian community and a well respected man of excellent character in the community at large.