Success Stories

Durga Rao | Customer Service, Hypercity, Manjeera Mall
[Vibhuti]

Durga Rao is from Krishna District, Mukut Village in Andhra Pradesh. He is unable to hear or speak since childhood. However, since a very young age he has been overcoming all the shortcomings with a determined attitude. He did his schooling from a normal govt. school in Machlipatnam. His teachers and friends were always by his side to help him. He cleared 10th in 2011 and worked in a printing press for 2 years at a meager salary of 2000/-.

His parents got divorced when he was 3-4 years old. He has one elder brother who is in a similar situation like him and since divorce both of them have been living with their father. His elder brother works in Midhani and earns 5400/- per month.

As a result of the referral programs at Y4J, Durag Rao came to know about this platform from one of his friends. Without thinking a bit, he availed the opportunity to undergo training. As a result he got into Customer Service at Hypercity, Manjeera Mall in April 2014. Currently, he earns 9700/- (8400/- take home salary) and is very happy to be able to support his family.

Not only this, his dedication has satisfied the HR of Manjeera Mall resulting in shouldering of extra responsibility to him.

Hari Babu| Packaging Dept.,Mana Food Products
[Amrita]

The youngest of five siblings, Hari was a normal, physically active boy. Since he had not been vaccinated, Hari suffered a crippling paralysis caused by the polio virus at age six, which weakened his left hand and leg. He had to go to school in a wheelchair, and when his parents took him to the Ruya Hospital in Tirupati, famous for their expertise in orthopaedics, they were told by the doctor there that their son would be in the wheelchair forever. Even as a child, he was extremely strong-willed. When he saw his parents in tears, he decided that he didn’t want to see them cry. He challenged the doctor that he would come back walking on his own two feet. The thought process of a six year old - remarkable.

The progress to mobility was a long and hard one, during which he had to move around in a wheelchair. Heat, tonics, and physical therapy coupled with the support of his friends and family gave him courage to walk. “When you’re an infant and learning to walk, your parents hold their hands out and call you to them, ‘come here!’ It was like being that little child again, he recalls. After four months of this, he noticed he could move his fingers and feet. In six months he was walking.

“I went back to the doctor at the Ruya hospital when I had regained mobility and no longer required a wheelchair. The doctor did not remember who I was. I reminded him that I was the child confined to a wheelchair, and you told me that I would never be able to walk again. The next time, don’t discourage your patients by saying such things, just say you don’t have the expertise to handle the case instead. If I had been your son, you would probably have tried much harder rather than dismissing me as a cripple for life”. The doctor had to later resign from the hospital.

Hari focused hard on continuing his studies and refused to let anyone carry him, insisting on working the wheelchair himself. He completed his polytechnic, where he studied computer science. After that, he worked with a reporter as a photographer for three months. “Look, we are persons with disability. But the mind given by god is perfect. We should use that effectively. I tell this to all my friends. This is what you have. Your mental fitness, we shouldn’t allow that to sleep. Don’t disable your mind. The only thing I could do is study and polish my mind”.

Youth4Jobs helped Hari to work on communication skills, computer knowledge and brush up his typing skills. He heard of the organization through his seniors in college, who joined in the first batch at the ADFC training center. Hari joined the training batch with 26 other people, and was hired by Pantaloons in Chennai, where he worked for three months.

Hari now works at Mana Food Products in Thirupur in their packaging department. Has been working there for the last 10 months. He got this on his own. He was first earning 5000, and is now earning 9000, including food and accommodation. In the next three months he anticipates that his high performance should get into a supervisory role, which will get him a higher salary.

For now he is happy and content. He bought a Telegu-to-Tamil book and is learning Tamil, since he is working in Tamil Nadu and wants to master the language. “I have told several people about Youth4Jobs”, he says. “They will tell others. The importance of being self sufficient. Standing on your own two feet.”

His advice is to the disabled community? “Believe you are normal. Help others, because that is when others help you. We have to help each other. Most of the disabled don’t take challenges, they are afraid. They feel they are less than normal. Think positive is all he has to say, we all have our challenges which we need to overcome. Don’t blame your disability, own it, like I did”, he says with a final dazzling smile.

Pradeep Reddy | Cafe Coffee Day
[Amrita]

Pradeep hails from Mahaboobnagar, which is approximately a hundred kilometers from Hyderabad. Both his mother and father work as farmers in the district. He has an elder brother and sister, and is the only member in his family with a hearing disability.

Hyderabad is where Pradeep completed his education, including school and college. His favorite subject in school was English. Not being able to hear didn’t prevent him from playing all sorts of sports in school, he enjoyed carrom and cricket the most. Once he completed his B.com, he heard of Youth4jobs from one of his friends, who helped refer him for the training. The friend strongly recommended the training, because it had helped place him in a company where he was earning a good salary. Since Pradeep was not getting employment because of his hearing disability, he decided to give Youth4Jobs a shot.

Youth4Jobs taught him spoken communication in English, skills related to a job in the retail sector, and soft skills, which he considered the most important. The soft skills helped him to communicate better with his peers and managers at his new job.

Pradeep got placed at Cafe Coffee Day in High tech city. When he first joined CCD, the reaction of the employees was very negative. Being the only disabled employee in the outlet, his peers were not convinced that he would be able to perform in his job. Communication was also a big problem initially. Everytime he would try to ask questions, he was met with resistance and blank stares. It took him about 2 months to learn everything on the job, and about that long for the team members to begin to understand him. Pradeep believes that the initial unfriendliness had more to do with ignorance than anything else. Since they had never interacted with a disabled person before,they had all sorts of misconceptions about it, and believed that his hearing disability would translate into bad performance.

Things have changed a lot since then. His team members have slowly opened up to him and now, he counts his team members as his friends. He enjoys his job, and earns 7000 per month.

He lives in a hostel here in Hyderabad, and sends almost his entire salary to his parents. He indicates that his father and mother are proud of their son, who is now an earning, contributing member of the family, and no longer has to depend on them for his needs.Everytime he goes home to visit, he is greeted with happiness, and his mother cooks all his favorite dishes for him.

I ask him if he is looking for a partner now that he is financially stable. He indicates that his elder brother still hasn’t been married, so marriage is not on the cards yet. But he is confident that he will be able to support a wife and family in a few years with the money he will continue to earn, thanks to Youth4Jobs.

Saidulu | Max
[Amrita]

Saidulu hails from Khammam district in Telangana, and was one of the older members from the disabled community to be trained by Youth4Jobs. When he was 3 years old, his mother and father got divorced. His father remarried and had two children from the second wife. Unhappy with the family and his treatment, he went to live with his mother, who provided for her child by starting a small Kirana shop in her village.

His hearing disability meant that he had to go to a deaf school, which he left after class ten to help his mother with running the store. Saidulu married when he was young, and his wife had a child soon after their marriage. The small Kirana store was not providing enough income to support a family, and he decided to look outside his village for job opportunities.

Saidalu worked for a year at Dr. Reddy’s laboratories as a computer operator; the company conducted a data entry course training for disabled people and he was able to get a job after going through the course. However, the employment was only for a short term, and once the year was over, Saidalu was back on the streets hunting for a job.

It was a few years before Saidalu got his next break. He continued to help his mother with the Kirana store in the meanwhile. He was informed by a JRP (Job Resource Person) about a job mela being held specifically for hiring disabled people. This is where he met the Youth4Jobs team and enrolled for the training. By then his wife was pregnant with their second chilld.The training consisted of leaning the Indian Standard sign language, soft skills, retail-specific skills, computer training and basic English training - everything that he learnt was very relevant to the workplace.

After completing the training, Saidulu got a job at Max, where he has been happily working since December. The company pays him a lot more than what he was making from the Kirana store with his mother, resulting in a doubling of the family income. His mother and wife now work at the Kirana store, while he works at Max.

Saidulu has already managed to save 16,000 from the few months of employment at Max, the first time his family has ever managed to keep any savings. This was a far cry from their previous hand to mouth existence where they had to work hard to make basic ends meet. He is now able to send his elder daughter to school, and looks at the future with positivity and confidence, thanks to the skills he learnt at Youth4Jobs, and the confidence that it would serve him well for the future.

Rajeshwar Tode | Max
[Amrita]

Rajeshwar is from Adilabad and is the eldest of three brothers. His father is a farmer, and his mother is a housewife who also helps out in the fields. Rajeshwar was the only member in his family with a hearing disability, his brothers were all born normal. He went to a normal school till the fifth grade, and then to a special school for disabled. Intermediate and college was completed at the Hellen Keller Junior college, which his parents paid for.

Despite being educated, he was unable to find a job because of his hearing disability. His parents were resigned to the fact that their son would not be an earning, contributing member of the family, and advised him to work with his father in the fields. His father would give him Rs. 1000 - 5000 as pocket money every month for all his expenses.

Rajeshwar did not enjoy working at the farm, and left the house to work at a small pharmacy shop as a helper in Adilabad. He refused to treat his lack of hearing as a disability, and used the prescriptions that the customers would hand him to find the medicines in the racks of the shop. His employer learnt to communicate with him a little through sign language, and soon gave him additional responsibilities like handling the billing and accounts, as well as a cashier. However, for all his efforts, Rajeshwar was being paid only around 2000 per month.

One day, he saw an ad for a job mela being held in Hyderabad. Normal people in his village were all going to Hyderabad, which was the nearest city, to try to find employment. When he told his parents about moving to Hyderabad, they gave him all the support and encouragement to do so. His parents hoped that he would find a job in the government sector like his younger brother, but he was refused due to his disability.

At the job mela in Hyderabad, he met Shridhar from Youth4Jobs, who convinced him to join the training for the following reasons - it would teach him valuable skills that he could apply to any job he applied for, and would also ensure a placement in any one the retail companies that they worked with. Rajeshwar agreed to join, and two months after completing the training,he was placed in Max in Hyderabad.

When asked about what he likes most about his job, he says it’s all the disabled people like him who work at Max. Throughout his life, he lived and worked with normal people, and wasn’t aware of such a large community of people like him. Max employs several disabled people at their stores, and Rajeshwar ended getting not just a job with a good salary, but a support system of friends who know exactly what he is going through. It is because of these reasons that he prefers Hyderabad to his village. His salary is helping his father pay for medicines for his illness, and paying his younger brother’s college fees. To him the best part of being employed is that he no longer has to ask his parents for anything, but is only giving back to them for everything they had sacrificed for their son.