- Yearbooks
Year Book 2015-16
The Year Book documents stories of trainees who have acquired the Permanent License, across Delhi (South, East, and North), Jaipur, and Kolkata centres of Azad, in the period April 2015-March 2016.
Azad Foundation’s Year Book is both a record and an exploration of the journey of trainees with the Women on Wheels (WoW) Programme. WoW is the flagship programme of Azad where women from resource-poor backgrounds (economically and socially deprived) are trained to become professional chauffeurs through a 6-8 month long training.
Azad’s focus is to create livelihoods with dignity for women who have been living on the margins of society. This requires not only access to skills and know-how (of driving) but also the confidence to claim the public space, the ability to negotiate a ‘masculine’ domain of work and surmount the challenges this throws up. Women from across class, caste, and community also experience tremendous reproductive responsibilities at home limiting their time and ability for paid work. Violence, discrimination, and sexual harassment are also rampant at home, on roads, and at the workplace. A training programme geared to create sustainable livelihoods in the non-traditional sector (which has traditionally been men’s domain) for women has to create capabilities of negotiating or redistributing unpaid reproductive responsibilities as well as resisting violence and harassment. It is with this in mind that Azad’s training curriculum spans three kinds of modules: technical skill-based modules leading to the acquisition of Permanent License and clearance of the Sakha test after which the trainee is declared employable; self-development modules such as Communications, English Speaking, Work Readiness, and First Aid aimed at developing women’s identity as confident professionals; and empowerment modules such as Self-Defense, Gender Rights, Legal Rights, Sexuality, and Health which are aimed at enabling the trainee to understand her social location and the structure of patriarchy leading to the building of courage and strategies to counter and resist multiple oppressions.
The Year Book documents stories of trainees who have acquired the Permanent License, across Delhi (South, East, and North), Jaipur, and Kolkata centres of Azad, in the period April 2015-March 2016. Given the socioeconomic background of trainees and the multiple ways in which they engage with the curriculum, the Year Book cannot be a compilation of dates and achievements. Each trainee comes in with her unique story, unique experience, and unique struggle. For Azad-a trainee is not a number. She is a precious individual who makes Azad an opportunity to assume control over her life and livelihood. The Yearbook offers a glimpse into each of these women’s stories of struggle and change.
