Archive - Jan 23, 2008
Toyota Makes India its Home and Offers Training to Youth
Today Business Week takes a look at Toyota and corporate responsibility:
Harish, who comes from a family that lives below the poverty line of $177 in annual income, was a good student but had no particular ambition. Then, last April, his schoolteacher alerted him to an advertisement by Toyota in the local paper. The automaker was inviting applications from 17-year-old, poor and needy students for factory training. It was offering free board, lodging, and education, plus a monthly stipend of $38. There were 5,000 applicants, and Harish was one of 64 boys from the southern state of Karnataka who made it to Toyota Tech, the training institute that opened last August as Toyota's first outside of Japan.
He now wants to be an automotive engineer. "I am so happy and can't believe," says Harish in his broken English about how his life and dreams have changed. They sure have. His mother and grandmother earn 65¢ daily as farm laborers, a brother is a bus cleaner, and a sister is training to be a nurse. But Harish is determined to change his life thanks to Toyota. In the three months he has been at the institute, he has saved $8 to give to his mother. "I want to make her proud," he says, outlining his determination to excel in his three-year course and bag the $180 and $230 fellowships for assiduous students.
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