VOCATIONAL TRAINING FOR UNDERPRIVELEGED WOMEN WITHIN MULTI-ETHNIC COMMUNITIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES:
AN INTIATIVE TO HELP BUILD MORE INTEGRATED AND COHESIVE COMMUNITIES IN ENGLAND AND WALES

BACKGROUND ON DIL TRUST UK
DIL Trust UK is a registered charity in England and Wales (Reg. No. 1122924) whose purpose is to support schools and vocational training programmes in Pakistan, as well as to extend its vision to the underprivileged women/ teenagers belonging to multi-ethnic minority communities in England and Wales.  DIL Trust UK is part of the DIL network of charities, which has its origins in the United States.

DIL TRUST UK’S VTC INITIATIVE IN ENGLAND AND WALES
As DIL Trust UK strives to support DIL’s initiatives in Pakistan.  In addition, we seek to extend DIL’s vision of educating underprivileged women and helping to develop their communities in Pakistan, to underprivileged young and mature women belonging to multi ethnic minority communities in England.  Our work in Pakistan has particular relevance as many of the women in England and Wales we seek to help are of Pakistani descent.

DIL Trust UK is in the process of launching its VTC initiative for England and Wales.  The programmes that comprise this initiative will be available through centres located in areas where large numbers of women lack fluency in English, and lack, for a variety of reasons, the skills and confidence necessary to achieve financial independence through employment.  We intend for our programmes to impart practical and relevant skills, such as TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), computer programming, accounting, bookkeeping and teacher training.  With these skills our students will be able to gain long-term employment in the manufacturing, industrial and service sectors.

DIL Trust UK believes that a lack of fluency in English, and the lack of appropriate, marketable skills fosters dependency on local council benefits and closes access to the job market.  We further believe that the polarization and isolation of women in multi-ethnic communities (of Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan, and Indian descent) away from the wider community only serves to isolate and alienate subsequent generations.   We intend for our efforts to help build community cohesion, and view our VTC initiative as having particular relevance during this economic downturn when multi-ethnic communities, which we well represented amongst the poor, are likely to be especially hard hit.

We intend for this initiative to be a public-private partnership, with strong support from government, local councils and established UK industries.  In the near term, our VTC initiative will target a variety of individuals:

• Women of marginalised multi ethnic minority communities involved in low wage work will receive after work training to help them gain higher wage employment and improved skills.

• First generation immigrant women of multi-ethnic minority communities who have minimum or no support from their families will receive skills and training to provide them employment and pursue independent lives

DIL Trust UK will work in partnership with NGOs, local councils, the Home Office, local welfare organisations, and the High Commissions of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh to implement our initiative.

DIL Trust UK's focus will be to ensure that our programmes foster integration and cohesion of diverse communities, within both the work place and more broadly, the general population. consists of identifying and working at the grassroots level with local NGOs and others.  We recognises the need to strengthen intergovernmental efforts to provide cohesion within multi-ethnic minorities; we believe increased people to people contact through greater participation of NGOs, including professionals and local council members will help promote socio-economic and cultural development of multi ethnic minorities in the UK.

• Youth Volunteers Programmes (“YVP”):  The main objective of the YVP is to harness the idealism of youth by providing local co-operation programmes in the fields of health, elderly care, accounting, etc.
• Documentation Centre Links:  DIL Trust UK will need to be linked to  local council documentation centres, providing us ready access to accurate and up-to-date information on technical, scientific and development programmes, facilitating job searches, and allowing us to connect with mentoring programmes.
• Promoting art, literature and films about multi-ethnic communities in the UK:  DIL Trust UK will initiate fundraising, cultural, and media events with the overall objective of  fund raising and increasing awareness of issues affecting multi-ethnic communities, and facilitating people to people contacts with mainstream UK society.  These events will focus on enhancing interaction between communities and strengthening affinities between people of South Asian decent and the local communities in which they live.
• Offering merit based fellowships and need based scholarships:  These will instituted over the long term, with the aim of providing increased cross-fertilisation of ideas through greater interaction among multi ethnic students. This Scholarship would be awarded to increase and improve technical skills.

DIL TRUST UK’S VOCATIONAL TRAINING PROGRAM INITIATIVE IN PAKISTAN
Since its inception in the 1997, DIL has successfully established over 250 girls’ schools in some of the poorest, most remote areas in Pakistan’s four provinces. Our main aim is to provide quality education, primarily free of cost, to girls living in rural areas and in communities where very little development has taken place. As of December 2008, 14,500 students were being educated in DIL schools in Pakistan. The education they receive is secular with a strong emphasis on the math, sciences and proficiency in English.  DIL’s aim is to equip students with the skills needed to compete in the job market.  DIL also runs teacher-training programmes, which are available to all DIL graduates and all its employees, through which DIL seeks to continually improve the quality of education offered in its schools.  DIL is now developing vocational training courses (VTC) to provide further support to the communities in which DIL’s schools are located. DIL’s VTC programmes target young women, the families of DIL students, and the local communities where DIL schools are located.  One of the first VTC’s to be established by DIL will provide vocational training to the DIL school community in Orangi, which is located in Karachi and is one of the largest squatter settlements in the world.

Target Groups:

• Primarily girl’s education in the rural and underdeveloped areas of Pakistan
• The extended family of DIL Students and the local community where DIL School are established in Pakistan, will be provided free Vocational Training courses .
• All staff as well as former students of the DIL School in Pakistan will be provided Teacher Training. 

Long term initiative in Pakistan.

• Extend the vocational training to other DIL school community in the five provinces of Pakistan.
• Provide teacher training facility primarily to girls (also extended to girls with UK passports living in various rural areas, which work in conjunction with the DIL Schools.
• Adopting, purchasing and operating schools presently closed down in the rural and underdeveloped areas of Pakistan; with the object to provide vocational training courses to that community.

DIL Trust UK is working on a number of noteworthy, long-term development initiatives, some of which have ties to the United Kingdom:

• Providing teacher training to staff and graduates from DIL schools as well as providing this facility to girls who have relocated to Pakistan from the UK following their marriage to a local individual (primarily in the Mirpur area)
• Long term goal- Work in conjunction with schools in England to have teachers go out to work and provide improvement to DIL’s Teacher Training Institute.
• Long term goal- in conjunction with local and UK branches of financial institutions; establish a micro finance programme to help graduates and their families start up their own businesses.