Skill Letts
VIEWS, VOICE & WAYS OF SKILLS
An in house journal of Additional Skill Acquisition Programme
Team Meetings of ASAP, a recharging experience for everyone after tiring days work, found answers to every problem even if it meant sitting late into the night when everyone else would be readying their beds for a comfortable sleep. The challenge of finding enough trainers to train students across the state was only a small issue for the team that gathered one evening around Dr. Abraham, a person who always dived deep into the depths of issues looking for possible solutions. Out-of-the- box thinking was a norm, rather than an exception, and this gave rise to the idea of creating trainers out of College students having potential and holding promise.
The idea behind TSS was to generate interest among the students in the programme through an exciting campaign that involved a campaign vehicle to go into the 190 colleges across the state with Radio Jockeys for awareness programmes laced with fun and activities. The road show cum recruitment campaign for Skill Development Executives saw great team building both in ASAP Headquarters and the field. Team work was evident at every stage of the campaign and there was perfect harmony between members in executing every stage of the event. The fact that TSS originated from one room and happened across the length and breadth of the state moving men, materials and machinery was proof of the fact that team work could create wonders in organizational planning. The task of designing a campaign went to the right person, Shri. M. Vivekanandan Nair, who wasted no time in carving out a plan. He then came up with a proposal for taking the idea to the Colleges across the State using a strategy to attract young talents.“ Travels in my small car with Riyas, an expert in strategizing, gave shape to the nascent idea and it was he who suggested the name Thousand Splendid Stars( TSS), a movement to find thousand potential trainers from the campuses of Kerala”, says Shri. Vivekanandan when quizzed about the birth of the campaign.“ I used all available resources and media contacts for giving shape to this exercise, an attempt to drive straight into the hearts of the teenagers studying in Colleges. Initially there was some resistance in the team when I spoke about using Radio Jockeys to create a fun element in the campaign”, was his next response.
Sending RJs into campuses for generating interest in ASAP among students was a challenge indeed and we took every care to see that things happened the way we planned. A three day training for the road show teams to prepare them for the ASAP campaign was also organized. Two decorated buses for road show and the RJ teams entered the ASAP campus for a dress rehearsal before being flagged off from the Secretariat to fan out into different parts of the state. The two campaign vehicles and RJ teams started from Thiruvananthapuram and Kasargode respectively and finally converged at the CMS College, Kottayam in a grand finale event” said Shri. Vivekanandan Nair about the campaign.
January 2017 5