From Pampore (Pulwama District) to Srinagar, Ishfaq’s transformation from a meek individual to a bold youth is truly remarkable. His father, Mr. Abdul Majeed is working in a restaurant, can hardly sustain the family with his measly income. Ishfaq’s mother is a housewife, while his sister studies in Class XII. Poverty kept him from studying beyond college level. Ishfaq himself had to give up studies after completing his B.Com. During this depressing phase, he one day came across outreach program being organized by DB Tech to mobilize students for a BASE training centre that was being set up at Pulwama.

To know more about the skill training program, he attended the outreach program and enquired about every feature of the skill development training. Recollecting the mobilization days, his communicative English trainer Altaf Lone shared, “Ishfaq had a list of queries that need to be answered during mobilization. In that gathering, he came forward to the first row and asked over 10 questions continuously. While addressing those questions, we shared all the features related to the BASE program”. Very next day, Ishfaq was reached the centre early morning with all necessary documents and was the first person to enrol in the course. During the interest inventory, it was found that he has the quality of salesmanship so the trainers advised him to join in Sales & Marketing course. Ishfaq began the course whole heartedly, as he was not sure if being trained in salesmanship skills would get him anywhere in the job market. But after a few days of life skills training, his outlook towards the course changed dramatically. Ishfaq also found the Communicative English classes very useful, and by the end of the course began to speak English with a fair degree of fluency. The 'Work Readiness Module' that rounded off the course taught him how to prepare his resume, face a job interview, and handle various types of workplace-related challenges.

He did very well in the course overall and soon received a job offer from V Mart (Srinagar) as a Cashier intern, with a starting salary of Rs 4000 per month. It was a huge boost to his financial condition, and he immediately began to think of bettering the financial condition. He says, “At BASE, I learnt different aspects of customer service and marketing, which are taught only in B-schools. I owe it all to my trainers. The life skills and time management skills I learnt from them are proving very useful at every step in my job. BASE is indeed the place of my re-birth”.