iLEAD Chennai South Visit Part I

I visited the iLead Centre located at South Chennai located within the Life Help Centre for Handicapped. The centre is located on the 2nd floor of a two storey building. As soon as you enter you notice the building has a ramp to the second floor to help students with disabilities. Today was my first day of field work and i entered with absolutely no idea of what to do. Well in short the brief was to do a GAP analysis of the iLead Program. At the centre i met up with Mr Dilip who is the coordinator for the iLead program. I was introduced to the iLead faculty which consisted of the faculties for each of the trades vocation namely Automobile, ITES , Hospitality and the faculty for spoken english.I was introduced to the faculty as someone who is from Singapore and is here to conduct a GAP analysis study.

I started interviewing Mr Edwin who is in the hospitality faculty. He has a excellent command of english and seemed really eager to talk about his students achievements. He started out explaining the whole iLead process starting from the Community Mobilisation Drive. He explained everything there is to know about the hospitality industry and how all his students are placed in top hotels and fast food chains across the city. He himself had over 10 years experience in the F&B line and his previous assignment was in Iraq where he was the dining room manager. He frankly admitted that his initial purpose to join this program as a faculty was for getting into a job. But as he saw the kind of impact he could have on his students lives he started liking the job.

I then moved on to Mr Ramesh the automobile faculty. He is an impressive young man with a bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. He also had 1 1/2 years experience in a automobile workshop where he worked as service manager. I was invited to sit in one of his classes. After taking a few quick snaps the classes started. Today's topic was the two stroke engine.

Ramesh's teaching was very easy to understand and peppered liberally with analogies. The students were actively involved in the proceedings and were asking doubts regularly. In between all this i was served coffee in the middle of the class. I was really being treated like a VIP. Well once the class was completed the students were given some practical assignment. The students set about working on their practical assignment with gusto.