DEREKABAD, Pakistan (UCAN) -- Fakher Naveed had no choice at the age of 13 but to drop out of school and help his father in the fields. Only a Caritas program in his village four years later changed that situation.

“I always had a passion for bikes. God bless our local Caritas animator who invited me to attend the career guidance program last year in May,” the youth told UCA News.

Naveed is one of 76 young Catholics between 15 and 25 years old in the second batch of Multan diocese's Apprenticeship Training Program for school dropouts. His parish is one of five in which Caritas Multan, the diocesan social-service organization, is currently implementing the initiative.

The program runs for three years, taking in a new batch each year and supporting them during their first year as apprentices. The first batch, in 2006, numbered 93. The diocese based in Multan city, 415 kilometers southeast of Islamabad, has implemented the program twice previously for other parish groupings beginning in 1995, through which 650 youths received training.

The apprentices themselves identify workshops or establishments in their area where they want to train, and Caritas personnel then talk with the owners to arrange the training, explained Amir Yaqub, coordinator of Caritas Multan’s non-formal education department.

After three years of internship, they are qualified auto mechanics, tailors, hairdressers, beauticians or electricians, but without formal credentials. “Most of them can’t find jobs in well-reputed places where the minimum educational requirement is the 10th grade. So they usually end up opening their own business on a small scale in the form of a repair shop or beauty saloon,” Yaqub told UCA News.

“We normally select participants with the help of their parish priest after a career guidance seminar in the area. These seminars focus on the importance of technical education, motivation and encouragement to start training in the trade of their choice,” he continued.

Yaqub acknowledged that the program's limited budget forces then to accept only some of the many school dropouts who attend the seminars and show willingness to learn a skill.

Each apprentice receives a monthly stipend of 400 rupees (about US$6) during the first year, the program coordinator elaborated. After that, the apprentices start earning money while they learn. The apprenticeships typically last four or five years.

“We ask the apprentices to pay 25 percent of the funds they receive, but usually they do not pay a single penny,” Yaqub lamented.

Money may not be in abundance now, but commitment and the prospect of a brighter future drive the apprentices such as Naveed, who started drawing a small salary after completing his first year as a motorcycle mechanic in a workshop in his native Derekabad, 90 kilometers west of Multan.

“I earn 200 rupees a week now that I can tune the engine. After finishing the training, I plan to open my own workshop and earn thousands (of rupees) a day, like any expert mechanic,” he told UCA News.

Naveed said he is the eldest of five siblings and had to drop out of school to help his father run the farm. Derekabad, a small settlement in the Thal Desert, is home to about 500 poor Catholic families who try to eke out a living from the arid land.

Nazia Bashir, another of the 29 young women and 47 young men who joined the program in 2007, is learning to become a beautician in Vehari, 160 kilometers east of Multan. “I had to leave school in grade seven because my father, a sweeper, could not afford my education. Now that I have learned a few beauty-care treatments, I understand that helping my mother at home is not the only option,” she told UCA News.

Poor minority Christians in predominantly Muslim Pakistan often are relegated to working as "sweepers," public sanitation workers who earn little for work that is looked down upon and can be hazardous.
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