Ballarpur Industries Limited (BILT), India’s largest paper manufacturing company and part of the over $3 billion Avantha Group, today announced the launch of ‘Ek Mouka’ – an employability training programme – at its Yamunanagar unit. Co-funded by USAID, the programme is in collaboration with CAP Foundation and The Society for All Round Development (SARD). Ek Mouka empowers underprivileged youth with vocational skills for employment in new-economy avenues, and specifically targets school dropouts, unemployed secondary school graduates, street youth and settlement community members.

Ms. Yashashree Gurjar, Chief General Manager-CSR, BILT, said, “BILT believes that education and vocational training hold the key to a secure future for the youth.” She added, “Ek Mouka is in sync with our CSR policy, and aims to provide education and employment opportunities to the Yamunanagar youth. With expertise from the CAP Foundation and SARD, the programme will surely be successful.”

Ek Mouka is a new-economy livelihood promotion training programme that seeks to bring the poorer sections of the community into the mainstream. It targets dependents of BILT employees, contractual workers and Self Help Group (SHG) members. The course has modules in Spoken English, Personality Development and Basic Computer Operations to meet the burgeoning service sector employment opportunities at malls, hotels and BPOs. The curriculum has been designed after extensive market research, and is in complete conformity with urgent market needs.

Ms. Nalini Gangadharan of CAP Foundation said, “Ek Mouka provides end-to-end livelihood solutions to the youth using the ‘Business for Community’ platform. We hope that BILT’s association with Ek Mouka will encourage other corporate houses to take up similar initiatives.”

Dr. Ashok Kumar, Unit Head at BILT’s Yamunanagar Unit said, “As part of our CSR, we offer opportunities to the difficult-to-reach sections of young people in society, and equip them with skills required to enter the competitive job market.”

The three-month training programme includes both theoretical and practical sessions, and will be implemented by SARD. The participants need to contribute only Rs. 500/- each for the entire course. The balance amount of Rs 4,000/- per participant will be jointly shared by BILT and CAP Foundation through USAID funding. BILT and Cap Foundation hope to reach out to around 500 youth from the vicinity by the year end. BILT, through its CSR programme, will assist the trained participants in seeking suitable placement.

While CAP Foundation is already implementing vocational training programmes in Delhi and NCR region, SARD has been partnering with BILT for the last five years. Through this partnership, BILT has reached out to around 50,000 people over the last five years. SARD has also partnered with CAP Foundation in New Delhi and has trained more than a 1,000 youth and around 85% of them have already been placed with various business establishments.

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About Avantha:

Avantha Group is one of India’s leading business conglomerates. Its successful entities include BILT, Crompton Greaves, Global Green, Avantha Power and Infrastructure, Solaris Chemtech, Salient Business Solutions, and Avantha Technologies. International subsidiaries include Pauwels, SFI, Intergarden, Ganz and Microsol. The over US$ 3 bn Avantha Group is on the path for a turnover of US$ 10 bn and a market capitalization of US$ 25 bn by 2013. The Group has business interests in diverse areas including power generation and distribution, power transmission and distribution equipment and services; paper and pulp; food processing; farm forestry; chemicals; infrastructure, IT and ITES. Led by Mr. Gautam Thapar, Avantha demonstrates strong leadership globally and emerges as a focused corporate, leveraging its knowledge, leadership and operations, adding lasting value for its stakeholders and investors.

About BILT

Ballarpur Industries Limited (BILT), part of the US$ 3 billion Avantha Group, is India’s largest manufacturer of writing and printing (W&P) paper. BILT accounts for over 50% of the coated wood-free paper market, an impressive 85% of the bond paper market and nearly 45% of the hi-bright Maplitho market in India. BILT has six manufacturing units across the country, with a capacity for producing 4.5 lakh tonnes of paper and 1 lakh tonne of pulp every year. In 2007, BILT acquired Sabah Forest Industries or SFI, Malaysia’s largest pulp and paper company with a production capacity of 1.5 lakh tonnes of paper and over 1.3 lakh tonnes of pulp per annum. This acquisition has elevated BILT’s global ranking to 87.

CSR at BILT

As part of its CSR, BILT works with more than 200,000 people living in remote parts of the country on a wide range of issues including livelihood enhancement, health and education. Formation and strengthening of community-based organisations like self help groups and youth groups, andcapacity building thepanchayat members are an important focus of the programme. The company offers skill training and also helpscommunities set upsmall enterprises through the provision of micro finance at the village level. BILT’s CSR initiatives have been widely recognized, and have been conferred with various awards, including TERI Award for CSR (2003-04), Business for Social Responsibility (BSR) Award for CSR (2005-06), Businessworld FICCI- SEDF CSR Award (2005-06), Asian CSR Award (2005-06), Golden Peacock Global Award for CSR in Emerging Economies (2007), Intel - AIM Corporate Responsibility Award (2007) and TERI Corporate Award for Business Response to HIV/AIDS (2008).

About CAP Foundation

Initiated in 1997, CAP Foundation is an innovative public-private partnership to address poverty alleviation through linking learning and livelihood needs of working children and youth at risk to equitable and promising market oriented employability opportunities. This Hyderabad-based foundation has developed a very strong resource base not merely in terms of creatively mobilizing monetary resources but also a series of other resources including successfully tested facilitation modules, training of trainer’s modules, professional technical support for market-oriented livelihood programme development, volunteers, business mentor networks, police involvement in protection and rehabilitation, alumni and community goodwill.

The CAP Foundation has an impressive footprint in terms of its approach, training content and methodology, capacity building of service providers, placement support trainees and sustainability of market oriented entry level workforce development with active collaboration with corporates, businesses, professional mentors, government departments and funding agencies.

About SARD

Society for All Round Development (SARD) is a non-profit organization aimed at increasing the participation of minorities and disadvantaged communities in mainstream development processes. SARD’s goal is to empower these groups, particularly women and adolescent girls, by improving their access to quality education and health services; providing vocational training; introducing micro-credit schemes; and promoting environmentally sustainable income generating activities. SARD takes a holistic and integrated approach to development that favours the sustainability of its programmes by providing people access to tools, training and structures they need.