Impact on selected skill development programs on women’s income generating activities in tsunami affected area in Batticaloa district.

Abstract

Over the past three decades women’s issues and more recently gender issues have gained prominence of the development platform and women play a significant role in household and community service. Households are the first place of gender socialization. Skill is an important aspect in people’s life and it should be considered as a part of their life. Today, it has been challenging for people in view of improving the people’s living status, improving income level and employment opportunities, especially for those who are in the developing nations affected by the tsunami. The contribution of government and non government organizations is highly expected by the people to empower them to face this challenge. In this way, CIDA has joined with Eastern University, Sri Lanka to contribute a lot to improve their living status in the Batticaloa district. Under the CIDA Restore project, skill training was provided to women, who were affected by tsunami in 2004 to raise their income and reduce poverty. The objective of this study was to assess the impact of the training on these women’s lives. Therefore, the conceptualization frame work for this study was developed based on the objective of the CIDA Restore project. It covered four areas such as living standard and income, service quality, self employment opportunity and human development activities. Personal and research information had been collected through structured questionnaires. The five point Likert Scale model of statement was used which ranking from one to five. The questionnaires were randomly issued to participants in Palameenmadu village. The present study revealed that women’s participation in skill training was more (31.3%) in the age group of 21-30 followed by the age group of 31-40 (22.8%). Among the respondents, most of them were married (62.5%) while 27.1% were school girls and 2.1% were women household heads. The main income of the family has declined. According to monthly income obtained before training, 54.2% of respondents had fallen into the family income category of below Rs.3000 but after getting training, it had been reduced by 47.7%. Also it was found that 37.5% of the women surveyed were self employed and 2.1% were working in the NGO sector. It was further noted that, a large number of respondents participated in a combination of sewing techniques and fabric painting (22.9%). Income level has increased after getting skill trainings provided by CIDA at Palameenmadu village. All the variables derived from the data revealed that the women were highly satisfied by the skill training provided by CIDA. Living standard and income, service quality, self employment opportunity and human development activities had mean scale value of 3.98, 4.17, 4.17 and 4.42 respectively. This present study concluded that skill development program under CIDA Restore project had a capacity to strengthen the living status of the rural community.