Chennai: V- Excel Educational Trust, an NGO based in R A Puram, Chennai, works for the betterment of children with special needs.
A few months ago, the trust, in a bid to create employment opportunities for young adults with special needs, launched ‘Tiffin Times’, a mobile food truck.
Under this initiative, the food truck is manned by adults with special needs under the supervision of trainers of the organisation and other volunteers. It was launched by the organisation to give an exposure to the adults of working in the food and hospitality industry.
Speaking about the initiative, head of this project, Gayathri Suryanarayanan says, “This is like an on the job training for our trainees to get them trained in the food and hospitality sector. This is a three year program by the end of which we have committed to training and placing about 100 trainees.”
Launched on 15 March this year, the truck has been going all around Mylapore and Mandaveli and RA Puram. “For the ffirst two weeks, the truck was placed in Thiruvengadam Street in R A Puram. After that it was moved to MG Road. Later for a month, it was placed in Luz Church road and was open for public. The response from the public was good so far and now the truck is back at Thiruvengadam Street where the head office of the V- Excel Educational Trust is present,” she added.
Though the initiative was started with the V-Excel trainees currently, she assured that there are plans to extend the initiative to others.
Currently there are nine-trainees who are exposed to different fields in this sector and based on their interest will proceed further. We are planning to extend our service to other NGOs that are involved with young adults with special needs.
“We also have Hotel Savera as their hospitality partner and they help with the training in the hospitality sector.” she added. The NGO also received the Pioneer of Change award from the Rane foundation for this project.
Article by Sharmada V