Malappuram, Kerala-based Jan Shikshan Sansthan has been honored with the UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy for its program, Vocational Skill Development for Sustainable Development. The award consists of a medal, a diploma and $20, 000.
Founded in 2006, Jan Shikshan Sansthan (formerly known as Shramik Vidyapeeth) provides vocational skills to non-literate, neo-literates as well as school drop-outs by identifying skills that have a market in the region of their establishment.
The organization also helps beneficiaries to find work or to start an enterprise individually or as a group, and has so far trained around 53,000 people, 41,000 of them women.
The program makes uses of innovate teaching technologies such as Braille applications, LCD projectors, computers and audio-visual equipment. The ‘talking pen’ – an electronic pen that reproduces the sound of written text – is also used in the program’s literacy teaching.
The program was also awarded the prestigious national Sakshar Bharat Award by the Government of India in 2014.
The UNESCO Confucius Prize for Literacy, established in 2005, with the support of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, gives special consideration to literacy amongst adults in rural areas and out-of-school youth, particularly girls and women.
The awards were presented in a ceremony at the UNESCO headquarters in Paris Sept. 8.