Rural community development is a complex process involving the interplay of social, political, and economic forces. Not everyone is cut out to be a “helping person”, a characteristic that is at the heart of grassroots community work. It also requires our professionals – many of them young – to live in unfamiliar and difficult conditions, by choice.
Through a carefully designed multi-tier selection process, PRADAN takes on board young people with varied educational backgrounds and prepares them to use their knowledge and skills to work for the benefit of the rural poor.
A meaningful year-long apprenticeship programme provides PRADAN’s new recruits an opportunity to assess life in grassroots work. It allows one to experience the living conditions and broad context and pace of work in the villages. Well-structured, the apprenticeship programme nurtures new entrants using the principle of learning-through-guided-practice, helping them to make an informed choice about their vocation.
Apprentices learn about the contexts of rural life, experience the conditions in which they would eventually work, and experience the kind of impact they would have on the lives of the poor families. Above all, they acquire practical skills of grassroots development work. While learning such skills, they obtain lessons as well about the changes they would have to make in their own lives.
