Meet Latha Pandiarajan, who has trained and educated over 60,000 women and children
Latha Pandiarajan, the Co-founder of recruitment firm Ma Foi, is giving back through her foundation, which runs an educational programme and sports academy for children, provides training and employment opportunities to the unemployed, and is training women to be entrepreneurs.
“I always feel that when you give, you receive much more,” says Latha Pandiarajan, who has touched lives of over 60,000 women and 8,000 children through her social organisation, the Ma Foi Foundation.
With the foundation, Latha has helped women take up entrepreneurial jobs, learn new skills, and has organised over 4,200 self-help groups. The foundation also runs an educational programme called Disha, through which over 4,000 children from underprivileged sections have received scholarships.
Latha co-founded Ma Foi, a recruiting company, with her husband, K Pandiarajan, in 1992. The two decided to start a social foundation to help children in need as they established the business.
The couple was troubled to see the rampant child labour in Sivakasi, a town in Tamil Nadu’s Virudhunagar district known for its firecracker matchbox and printing industries. It was where her husband grew up.
She started making efforts in Sivakasi by urging parents to let children go to school instead of letting them work, which led to the foundation’s first educational initiative. Today, the foundation also works with women and children in Chennai, its suburbs, and the rural areas around Madurai.
Educating children
The flagship educational programme, Disha, provides scholarships to children from disadvantaged backgrounds. It goes beyond education and focuses on holistic development of children by encouraging them to play sports, participate in school activities, and enter leadership programmes.
To nurture sporting talent, Disha Sports Academy identifies children between the ages of 10 and 14 who can be potential football players, athletes, and boxers. It also creates sport infrastructure in government schools and provides sports equipment.
In the last three years, students from the academy have won over 120 medals, including two state boxing championships, three national boxing medals, and the district championships in football and athletics..
Latha also works with government schools to provide skill-building programmes for children, such as personality development programmes, spoken English classes, and leadership programmes.
Most educational scholarships and sport opportunities available in the country are for students who are identified as bright and talented. However, this leaves many behind.
Latha recalls, “Once, I got a call from a principal of a government school saying NGOs come and help bright students, but nobody bothers about children who don’t study well. So, to help such children, we launched the Gems of Disha Programme.”
The programme began 12 years ago, with 60 students from four government schools in Chennai. Latha brought together the ‘last 15’ students studying in Class 8 and conducted mentoring sessions. The mentoring sessions were by working professionals, alumni of the schools, rather than teachers. It helped children relate to them as they come from the same background and speak the same language.
Since the first batch, over 250 students from the programme have passed Class 10 and are pursuing further education.
Providing employment opportunities
“By and large, education-wise, in terms of access to education, I see a lot of things have become better now. But I think job creation and employment is the area where more work needs to be done,” Latha says.
To deal with unemployment and underemployment, her foundation has launched Smart Centre in Avadi, a suburb in Chennai. The centre provides training to unemployed graduates, especially those who study in semi-urban colleges that don’t offer campus placements.
Along with Tech Mahindra Foundation, Ma Foi Foundation is successfully running a programme to train students in banking and financial services sectors. Students get jobs after a fourth-month certification course.
So far, 400 students have been placed in companies such as Shri Ram Finance, Sundaram Finance, SoftBank, and NABARD.
“Because we are in the recruiting industry and understand the nature of the corporate world, we've been able to tailor programmes to help students get employment,” Latha says .
Helping women empower themselves
Latha believes the self-help group movement is a great tool for rural and semi-urban women. "It gives them a platform to come together and express themselves. It has given them a place to share and learn new things.” .
The foundation brings women together and equips them with skills for tailoring, jute bag making, and more. They are taught about entrepreneurship and given help to set up their own small enterprises. The foundation also helps them get loans and avail schemes from nationalised banks.
Furthermore, the foundation helps women learn digital skills. Under Skills on Wheels, the foundation runs a van equipped with five laptops; this travels to various areas around the city to teach women digital literacy – including mobile banking, online transactions, social media, and more.
Latha believes that technology can become a great enabler and help women become entrepreneurs from the comforts of their homes.
“I have been on the jury for three years for the Homepreneurs Award where I have seen girls and women from small towns with small enterprises like providing nutritional snacks to school children, selling idli flour from their homes,” she says.
She says women are more hardworking, enterprising, and efficient at multitasking. However, they miss out on entrepreneurial opportunities because of social constraints and issues of mobility and safety.
Latha suggests that efforts must start at the college level to inspire girls to turn to entrepreneurship.
Nurturing entrepreneurship
In a bid to nurture more entrepreneurs, in collaboration with Native Lead Foundation, Latha is in the process of starting a programme called Startup Tamil Nadu 2020 to create an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Tier II and Tier III towns.
“Creating an entrepreneurial ecosystem is very critical in our country. In our country, failure is still not taken well; there is a negative connotation attached to it. ”
A failed attempt often leads to an end in entrepreneurial efforts, which stems the entrepreneurial spirit. She believes rather than as an impediment, failure must be seen as a teacher to start up again.
The joy of helping
Latha recalls an incident when a 68-year-old woman got emotional after receiving an award at a function organised by the foundation. Another woman was extremely delighted when she received a certificate after completing an embroidery course because she had always wanted to get a certificate like her children.
“Sometimes we assume a lot of things, but there are small things that give a huge amount of joy to a woman. These are the things that keep me going. The kind of joy you see in seeing people grow around you is what keeps me motivated,” Latha says.
(Edited by Kanishk Singh)