Sealed Air Corporation, engaged in the business of food packaging, food safety, cleaning and hygiene solutions, launched their Skill Development initiative ‘Garima- Diversey School of Hygiene’ India. Present at the launch were Himanshu Jain, MD and VP, Indian Subcontinent and South East Asia for Sealed Air and Dr Ravikant Singh, president and founder, Doctors For You.
Sealed Air has embarked upon Garima, a CSR program to improve and standardize the skill sets for the cleaning industry and aims to enable employment, bring scientific approach to the cleaning and hygiene profession, and enhance the standards of the cleaning industry. It also helps the industry bring dignity to the job by positioning them as ‘Hygiene Technicians’ instead of janitors. At its core, the initiative reflects Sealed Air’s belief that creating cleaner and healthier environments is of paramount importance.
Talking about this initiative Jain said, “There are two pressing challenges for the cleaning industry—lack of scientific approach to cleaning and lack of dignity to the cleaning job. Cleaning is still looked at as a menial job that does not need any kind of training, which is what we are changing. With Garima, we are trying to improve and standardise the skill sets for this important but ignored industry, thereby bringing dignity to the jobs of cleaning professionals, who we generally choose to ignore. Putting a major focus on science of cleaning, we aim to move cleaning professional from being a janitor to a ‘hygiene technician’, from being a cleaner to a health assurance specialist.” He added his company has been piloting this initiative across country and has trained 537 hygiene technicians.
Garima has three specific objectives; Science of Cleaning – bringing scientific approach to cleaning; Employment – helping low skilled unemployed youth get jobs; Dignity – bringing dignity to the cleaning profession by positioning them as ‘Hygiene Technicians’ instead of janitors.
Dr. Ravikant Singh added, “Doctors For You and Diversey have been working together for more than two years on various initiatives, such as Soap for Hope, Linen for Life and now Garima–Diversey School of Hygiene, India. This skill development and employment generation program is one of the few initiatives that is focusing on employment for all trainees. We have trained youth from urban slums of Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai as well as rural youth from the valleys of Kashmir, to Bihar and Kokrajhar in Assam. Now, we plan to train 5000 youth within 2017.”
