About BET

         

"Bhagavat Educational Trust (BET) was founded in 1997 and has evolved over several years; its ethos is to promote mutual assistance where by one marginalized group assists another marginalized group for the mutual benefit of both. BET has operated in several continents including Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe in each of these continents promoting the concept of mutual assistance."                                                                                             

          Our ‘Modus-operandi’ is to work very closely with other organizations in order to facilitate cross fertilization of knowledge and to avoid duplicating costs, where possible we apply business principles to maximize our scarce resources.                                                      

          Within the Europe 2020 Strategy, Member States agreed to work together to meet targets in the fields of education, employment and social inclusion, for the EU to become a smart, sustainable and inclusive economy. These 3 mutually reinforcing priorities should help the EU and the Member States deliver high levels of employment, productivity and social cohesion. The 2020 strategy calls for improvements in education & human capital: “In a rapidly changing world, lifelong learning needs to be a priority–it is the key to employment, economic success and allowing people to participate fully in society". This underpins the guiding principles of Living and Learning Abroad, allowing opportunities for social and European inclusion to disadvantaged young people, who without BET would have remained disengaged from society and lifelong learning.                                                        

          BET fully agrees with the aspirations of the EU 2020 strategy and its objectives for which we feel the project helps address the first 3 - employment, education, social inclusion. We have adopted a Chinese proverb ‘It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness’ BET believes that each hosting organization and sending organization that participate in the project a candle is lit, the young people referring to the project as a ‘Life Changing Experience’.                                                       

The beginning...                                                        

Initially BET operated in India, instigating projects for
Street children in Bhopal, making school desks and benches.
Similarly, in Uganda a project was also established for street
children to produce educational learning aids such as wooden
jigsaw, abacuses etc for distribution by the Ugandan
Government.                                                  . 

  During 2004 BET became the official partner to the Prince’s Trust in Bulgaria, where by BET would host under its project ‘ Living and Learning Abroad’ marginalized and socially excluded participants from the UK consisting of ex-offenders, former substance abusers and those in or leaving care to name a few. The teams consisting of 10 Young people and 2 team leaders would assist an orphanage in Bulgaria or more recently street children in Turkey For further information please refer to the following link Prince’s Trust

Our target group from the UK consisted of NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or Training) the rationale behind this is demonstrated in the following facts:                                                            

        Ø  In 2005 20% of young people were considered as being NEET’s                                                     

        Ø  Between 1997 and 2006 there was a 15% increase in unemployment for 16 – 24 year olds                                                      

        Ø  The productivity loss to the UK due to young unemployment is estimated at £10m a day                                                

        Ø  The cost to the exchequer is estimated at £20m a week in job seekers allowance                                                       

        Ø  Every year 70% of school age offenders enter in to the Youth Justice system                                                    

        Ø  There is a 72% chance of re offending within 2 years of their release                                                       

Since the inception of this project, we have also become the coordinating organization, facilitating such projects between sending and hosting organizations. Several innovations have taken place; in order to assist the NEET’s entered in to employment, educations and training to name a few:                                                             

        Ø  On line resource centres                                                     

        Ø  City and Guilds qualification in Personal Development                                                  

        Ø  Career seminars                                                       

        Ø  Introduction of sustainable SME’s in the hosting country                                                

Taking mutual assistance to the next level

"With the economic downturn, unemployment has been particularly severe among disadvantaged young people. In light of the success of our Mobility projects we wanted to transfer the modus operandi to other Western EU countries, namely Spain and Italy. Both countries have the highest youth unemployment 40% and 27% respectively, so we felt we had an important contribution to make. The main objective has been to get each partner to a level where they were comfortable applying for funding for their own mutual assistance projects.”                                          

                                            Paul Baron     MBE