The word "Mother" symbolizes unconditional love, enduring affection and unbound commitment and denotes concern, intangible bond and perennial support. One cannot tag herself as a mother until she meets the real qualities. TCV is a home for the orphans, destitute and deprived children of the society and hence home mothers have an added responsibility to play this role. They are charged with an extraordinary role to be surrogate mothers. The challenge here is that there are more than simply one or two children to take care of, children with vast age gaps and varying backgrounds and behaviour.
Like any mother in a family, home mothers in Tibetan Children's Villages play a significant role in children's lives. They are the pillar around which children spend their day to day life. They are the role models to the children. Not only their hard work and effort, but their attitude and personality help children grow into healthy individuals, physically, mentally and emotionally. Although our home mothers were working with full dedication, lack of proper and systematic training hindered their full potential. Thus, the need of training for the home mothers was felt necessary to strengthen mother-child relationships.
Inception
After careful planning, TCV launched the Mother's Training Centre at EDRC in 1998 with the sole aim of providing these potential home mothers to meeting those requirements. The centre began with the intensive four-month orientation course to all existing mothers in batches. By the end of year 2000, all our existing mothers have undergone necessary training. The course content ranges from basic language skills to value education, besides topics like child psychology, health and hygiene, and home management. As the need for more trained foster mothers was too evident, the centre reinforced itself to provide comprehensive training to prospective new mothers.
The initial training years were dedicated to invigorating the established home mothers with a three month in-service training, with the sole goal of training them as capable home mothers and add perfection to their job.
Growth and Development
Since 2001, TCV MTC faced a complete makeover with the TCV Head Office redefining the strategies of recruitment - that aspiring candidates must first meet certain criteria before getting enrolled into the one-year training program. The candidate must have formal education of at least up to class eight, committed to serve the children of TCV and display language proficiency both in Tibetan and English. Thus, this platform served as a dual purpose to define the recruitment policy and provide free and good education to the candidates. Thereby, based on the individual performance and aptitude, the candidate is then evaluated and finally recruited for the job.
Facilities
The MTC takes care of all the requirements of mother trainees including Board, Lodge, Administration, Medical, Education, Clothing, Toiletries, Pocket Money, Water & Electricity, Repair/Maintenance and Miscellaneous expenses, etc during their course period.
Course Highlight
The twelve-month training program calls for two semesters that include theory and practical classes. In the theory segment, knowledge dissemination on range of subjects like child psychology, home science, education, health care, diet and nutrition, home management, in particular Tibetan and English languages are undertaken.
While in the practical section, hairdressing, cooking and handicrafts form essential elements of topics. Various resource persons are invited on occasions to highlight on important and relevant topics. The trainee's academic performance is tested via continuous assessment of both theory and practical papers. The second semester is entirely based on practical approach where the trainees are placed at various TCV branches to observe sense and believe in experience as home mothers. Their hands-on performance ranks according to the feedback and evaluation given by the respective Director/Principal.
Brief Statistics
Since then the MTC has trained over 211 Tibetan women till date and almost all of them were into work now. Most of them have become regularized home mothers while some were still under contract home mothers. Currently, the 12th batch is in session with 14 women and they will be completing their course by February 2008.
The present TCV home mother's literacy is 84% and 16 % is semi-literate. The salary variation is framed based on their education degree. The centre will continue to train, educate, and provide maximum support and resources to help strengthen the role of mothers in our children's villages and elsewhere…
Mrs. Kalsang Choedon
Mother's Training Centre (MTC)
C/o Head Office
TCV School Dharamsala Cantt.
Distt. Kangra-176216 (H.P.) India
Tel: +91 1892-221348
Fax: +91 1892 221670
Email: headoffice(at)tcv dot org dot in
