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Executive Summary
Livelihood is defined as ‘means of securing necessities of life’ and Urban livelihood is a means of securing basic needs via economic activities in urban cities.
Urban poor livelihood can also be measured in terms of ‘income deprivation and deteriorating living. The average monthly household income of 41% of urban poor households was found to be between Rs.5000-Rs.10000 which is well below the income level of Rs.32000 required to have a decent livelihood in urban areas.
Focusing on empowerment of youth can be instrumental in improving the livelihood status of the urban poor by helping families move out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
Currently India has the world’s largest youth population - 50% of the population is below the age of 25 and 25% is below the age of 14; However, over 30% of 15 - 29-year olds are unemployed.
Ensuring good foundational learning outcomes (0-12 years) and appropriate skills training for the urban poor youth (18-30 years) can help in this empowerment process by improving employability and hence income of the urban poor youth
The 2001 census showed the literacy rate in Delhi was 81.7% while in slum areas in Delhi, it was 55.6%. 75% of the workforce in India don’t have any skill training. The unemployment rate for graduates aged 20–24 was 29% in 2011–12, for those 25–29, it is 12%.
Foundational Learning Outcomes
In early childhood education (0-12 years), foundational learning outcomes could be measured via i.e. Cognitive; Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL) ; Physical and Mental health.
After analyzing multiple roadblocks to learning outcomes through primary and secondary research, three major barriers emerge:
Parent’s participation and attitude in the child’s education.
Teacher’s communication and Interaction with the child.
The qualification and training of teachers for early childhood development programs.
The solutions for identified problems include but are not limited to organising workshops and training focused on parent-child relationship and teaching practices and focused interventions such as Pre-primary education programs for poor communities, mindful parenting programs executed by partnering with NGOs and NPOs such as Central Square Foundation, Pratham Education, etc.
Skill development for employability
Focusing on skill development in relevant sectors via right partnerships can help improve the formal employment prospects of the urban youth in the age group of 18-30. There are 7 key personas that are identified in the urban poor population based on gender and occupation. These are: employed, unemployed and pursuing education, unemployed and looking for job opportunities, unemployed and not part of education, employment or training and finally entrepreneurs and street vendors. Each of the personas face a unique set of barriers and success metrics. For example: A male who is unemployed and not willing to work in positions in which he does not use the skills he is trained for, would need to be trained in skills such as resume and interview preparation. On the other hand, a female not part of education, employment or training (NEET) who possesses no skills will need to be trained in basic foundational skills. A comprehensive framework of the ‘successful intervention module’ needs to address each persona on 3 dimensions: 1. Point of contact 2. Skill training 3. Support Point of contact, which is customised for each persona, refers to the level of engagement that would be required to ensure that the people do not drop out. For example: Females not part of education employment or training would need to have a household level point of contact, to convince family members and break stigmas. Skill training involves: Identifying the type of skill needed (Foundational, Employability, Entrepreneurial) and specific training for potential future job opportunities. 5 booming sectors have been identified with maximum potential to add jobs in the coming few years: 1. Information Technology Enabled Services(ITES) 2. Renewable Energy 3. Tourism & Hospitality 4. Transportation & Logistics 5. Beauty & Wellness Each of these sectors will see a surge in job opportunities across their value chain, each of which will require a different level of skill set. Multiple entry level/ blue collared jobs that will emerge in the lower part of the value chain are matched to each persona based on their inherent characteristics and the job requirement. For example: Less educated females are matched to jobs in the beauty and wellness sector such as spa executives which do not require high educational qualifications. Partnerships with multiple organizations such as National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) would be important for providing financial support for small amounts such as travel expenditures, for capital to setup and expand local businesses and for non-financial (e.g. Skill trainers, mentors) support.
What is urban poor livelihood? Why is it important?
Livelihood is defined as ‘means of securing necessities of life’ and Urban livelihood is a means of securing basic needs via economic activities in urban cities.
Urban poverty is defined as the conglomeration of social and economic difficulties in the metropolitan cities. The basic necessities of life for humans to survive and thrive are access to basic needs i.e. food and a roof over the head. Our survey indicates that housing (83.3%), food security (96.7%), access to water and good sanitation (93.3%) are vital in order to have a livelihood. Hence, urban poor livelihood is measured in terms of ‘income deprivation’ and hence deteriorating living. ‘
In India, nearly 81 million people in ‘urban areas live below the poverty line'.
Urban poor populations don’t have accessibility and affordability to basic elements of livelihood:
· A survey conducted in 2012, indicates that 96% of low-income urban poor in India faced housing shortage.
· In tier 1 cities such as Delhi and Mumbai, the food security faced by urban poor was 76.3% and 77.2% respectively
· 67% of the urban poor population don’t have accessibility to water and 60 million don’t have access to good sanitation.
The nexus of the above mentioned livelihood challenges is income deprivation which contributes to poor livelihood. The average monthly household income of 41% of urban poor households was found to be between Rs.5000-Rs.10000 (Approx. $70-$140) and 25.6% of them even earnt less than Rs.5000. Hence, the accessibility to improved livelihood can be improved by focusing on improving the economic conditions of the urban poor by facilitating a regular and sufficient source of income through meaningful employment.
The importance of employability of the workforce is especially important now at the back of current urban unemployment which is rising from 7.1 to 8.8 %.
For ensuring a sustainable improvement in the living conditions of the urban poor, focusing on youth is important.
· India is a home to a ‘fifth of the world’s youth.’
· 50% of the population is below the age of 25 and 25% is below the age of 14.
· Youth have a contribution of over 34% in the country’s national income.
This provides India with a unique demographic advantage. Youth are valuable assets that can stimulate India’s economic growth and solve the overall problem of livelihood. But this opportunity will be lost without proportionate investment in human capital development. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 2030, adopted by the United Nations in 2015 also set the agenda specifically for target 8.6, which calls for the proportion of youth with NEET status to be substantially reduced in the next 15 years.
However, meaningful employment and employability of poor urban youth is still a major problem in India:
· 75% of the workforce in India don’t have any skill training, 3% only received formal training and 12% received informal modes of training
· The youth are faced with many challenges, and the one of the most serious issues is the growing number of idle youth who are not in employment, education and training (NEET). India has the world’s largest youth population but over 30% of 15 - 29-year olds are unemployed.
· Only 3% of males aged 15–29 are neither pursuing education or training nor participating in the labour force. But 50% of women are in this category and the share increases with age. In the 25–29 age group, 71% of urban women fall in this category
· Out of the more than 500 thousand final year bachelors students aged 18–29 who were surveyed, 54%were found to be unemployable
· The unemployment rate for graduates aged 20–24 was 29% in 2011–12, for those 25–29, 12%.
In order to address the entire ambit of youth in urban poor communities, It is important to focus on both early age education (at a school) level, which would help put the less privileged kids at an equal pedestal when they reach the higher education/ job seeking age as well as skill enhancement of the working age population (18-30 years) to help them uplift themselves and their family from the vicious cycle of poverty.
In this paper, we explore investing in good foundational learning outcomes and appropriate skills training as a means to improve employability and hence income of urban poor youth.
This paper divides the intervention design in 2 parts:
I. Early childhood education (0 – 12 years)
II. Skill development for employability (18 - 30 years)
I. Early Childhood Education
Early childhood education is defined as the sum of all forms of education (formal/informal) provided to children till the age of 8 years. In India, the school system divides the primary education into lower primary (6-10 years) and upper primary (11-12 years). Hence, we define the early childhood age group in this paper from 0 - 12 years.
· Our primary survey indicates that 90% of the people believe that improving early childhood education will result in a livelihood improvement.
· Results from studies conducted by Jack Heckman have shown that ‘rates of returns to society are higher if we invest in the early years of life when the brain architecture is developing'. This will have a direct effect in improvement of the child’s future livelihood.
We will focus on improving learning outcomes as a way to improve the academic achievements. Here, learning outcomes mean any measurable skills, abilities, knowledge or values that the student demonstrates:
Current Reality:
· Global research shows that 90% of brain growth occurs by age 5, meaning that the quality of early childhood education has a crucial impact on the development and long-term schooling of a child.
· Approximately 17% of children aged 5 to 14 are still out of school, and 36% of the population of India were illiterate in 2004-05. (Government of India, 2006).
· The 2001 census showed the literacy rate in Delhi was 81.7% while in slum areas in Delhi, it was 55.6%.
We have approached the section in the following 4 steps:
· Define learning outcomes in terms of the following components:
I. Cognitive
II. SEL (Socio-Emotional Learning)
III. Environment – nutrition
· Identify multiple factors that act as barriers to good learning outcomes in each of the above domains.
· Prioritize factors on the basis of the results of the primary and secondary research.
· Draft a solution space which will address all possible set of solutions for factors that have been prioritized.
Learning Outcomes Domains
I. Cognitive
Cognitive skills or functions encompass the domains of perception, attention, memory, learning, decision making, and language abilities. Dulaney et al. (2015) showed that children with weak attention span and short-term memory had lower academic achievement. Cognitive abilities such as impulse controlling, planning, and monitoring are crucial for both areas of learning (reading and mathematics).
A. Home factors/ Child’s environment:
B. Income-related differences:
In poor and low-income families, the home environment is more likely to be chaotic, and parents are more likely to be stressed and unresponsive.
Higher incomes are consistently associated with better outcomes for children. The largest effects were for cognitive and school measures (teacher-administered math and reading scores), followed by behavioural and health measures, and then social and emotional measures, which had the smallest associations.
C. Social factors:
Neighbourhood conditions—such as safety, presence of parks and playgrounds, and access to fresh produce—can have a significant impact as well. The schooling infrastructure and facilities, the children from slums could have access to good quality education or not, and whether there were any differentials in terms of quality of access, provision of resources, which contribute to the learning achievement levels.
II. Socio-Emotional Learning (SEL)
SEL is a sum total of a number of skills: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision making.
According to the Centre for the Developing Child at Harvard University, the impact of adversity in early childhood has a significant negative impact on executive function and self-regulation which limits their ability to access the tools given to them in school systems. States like Delhi and Uttarakhand have introduced a “Happiness Curriculum”, aimed at improving the mental well-being of pupils through developing their levels of mindfulness, critical thinking, problem-solving, and relationship building.
A. Family/ Home environment:
· Family - Helps young people make sense of their own emotions, develop capacity for self-awareness, and learn to manage and regulate emotions.
· Parent characteristics - Parental characteristics include parental reactivity and ER, mental health, and familial history including culture, beliefs and family background.
· Parenting style - Parenting style reflects parental attitudes and behaviours toward children that, taken together, help to create the emotional climate of the family.
· Factors such as family background, differences in educational opportunities, and children’s learning behavior explained 34.4% of differences in children’s test scores, within which family SES explained 15.5% of the difference.
B. Lifestyle
Lifestyle factors linked to socio emotional health include sleep, exercise, nutrition, relaxation, recreation, and relationships. Lifestyle is influenced by culture, religion, economic and social status, beliefs and notions (nutrition, time to spent on self-development, sleep).
C. Society/Community:
The conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, including health systems affect their development. When children and families have access to social, economic, and physical resources that promote health and wellbeing (e.g., safe and affordable housing, quality education, public safety, availability of healthy foods, and safe play spaces), they have more opportunities to thrive. Conversely, children growing up in communities that lack these positive environmental conditions tend to suffer poorer health outcomes relative to their peers.
III. Environment And Nutrition
Physical and mental health development of a child is defined as environment and nutrition. The environment and nutrition in the early age period play a vital role ‘in the physical, emotional and social development, and the ability to express themselves and acquire knowledge’ of a child.’
Environment can be defined as the location or setting in which a child grows, interacts and explores.
Poor nutrition and environment setting can result in the following effects:
· Increase vulnerability to diseases and hence, reduction in immunity.
· Damage brain development and affect mental health.
· Stunted physical growth.
These ripple effects will result in poor productivity, health and mental development. This will impede the child’s overall development and learning. Hence, affecting the child’s future livelihood as they won’t be able to be part of a healthy workforce. The World Bank reported that improving and focussing on nutrition during early childhood years will ‘increase the adult wages by 5-50% and GDP by 4-11%’.
Current Reality
· 32.7% of the urban poor children are malnourished.
· Greater than 46% of urban poor children are underweight.
· 69.8% of the urban poor children are victims of substance abuse due to the poor environment.
Main Factors that Influence the Learning Outcome Domains
A. Food Insecurity
Food insecurity and malnutrition cause both long and short-term effects on the physical, health, and mental growth of a child. In India, 'malnutrition is twice as prevalent in city slums as the non-slum areas’.
B. Income
The level of income had a determinant influence on the stunted growth of urban poor children - ‘six out of 10 children under 5 years are stunted in the lowest wealth index as compared to 2.5 children out of 10 in the highest wealth index.’
C. Home Environment
The household environment of a child can have either a positive or a negative effect on the child’s physical and mental development. Children living in slums are exposed to higher infectious diseases because of the poor sanitation and infrastructure of the slums.
D. School Environment
The environment that educators provide to the children has to be an effective learning environment. It should not be an environment of training the children to suppress behaviors or to follow rules blindly. Integration of an academic learning and self-regulation approach where a child’s capacity and disposition to set a goal increases leads to the holistic development of a child
Survey Results:
Solution Space
To develop the solution space, we have prioritized and identified the high-medium and medium-high factors on the basis of results from our primary survey.
II. Skill Development for Employability
Now that we have covered early childhood development, this section focuses on upskilling and reskilling the adult youth population from the ages of 18 to 30. We aim at utilising a persona-based approach in understanding and developing a framework to upskill the target population considering sustainability and functional ease of implementation.
Programs to Strengthen Youth Employability
The aim of skills development, employment or entrepreneurship programs is to help reduce unemployment, and equally importantly underemployment, by helping youth leverage opportunities to engage in productive and appropriately remunerated work. Programmes targeted for the youth have led to betterment of livelihood. Following are some examples of successful national and international programmes:
A. Uganda Youth Opportunities Program: Groups of 15–30 youths were selected through a random process with input from community leaders and given grants for each group to purchase vocational training and equipment to operate in their chosen trade. The early results suggest that the approach has, among other positive outcomes, led to a 150% increase in the probability of working in the trade, a 135% increase in hours worked, and an 18% increase in last week’s and last month’s income.
B. The Jóvenes Programs: The Jóvenes programs have represented a prototypical model of a comprehensive intervention to improve youth employability and human capital in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1991. Participants are poor youth with low levels of education – high school at most, unemployed, or underemployed.
· In Argentina, there is a 10% increase in the employment probability of adult women, while in Chile the program increased the probability 21 percentage points, with significant results for youth 21 and younger, and women.
· Similarly, earnings increased about 10 percentage points in Argentina and Dominican Republic, with particularly favorable outcomes for young males and adult females; and about 26 percent in Chile, with best results for the youngest. (Interventions to support Young Workers in Latin America and the Caribbean)
C. Yuva Parivartan: Focuses on training youth dropped out of school. They are active in 11 states all over India. Of the total youth that have been trained in their camps and Livelihood Development Centres for the period 2018-19, more than 30% of those working for wages have received a hike in the last 6 months.
The figure is even more encouraging for the self-employed youth of which more than 80% have had an increase in income.
We considered the following questions when designing the framework for the intervention module:
1. Who is our target population and what are the major barriers that prevent them from achieving a respectable status of living?
2. In order to raise awareness, how would the level and mode of engagement differ for different categories of the target population?
3. What areas of the local economy are growing and are projected to grow? What are the available job opportunities for the target population?
Personas and Barriers
Personas are representations of a cluster of users with similar characteristics. In our case, we have considered gender and occupation as factors to segregate the population into 7 groups. Each of them face a unique set of barriers in accessing the right set of skills to earn enough to make a respectable living. Our definition of the results of a successful intervention would differ for each of the personas. Most of the youth that are part of the workforce are either employed in the informal sector or do work that does not require any skills like driving, in formal enterprises.
Some of the common barriers faced are:
· More than half of the unemployed young adults in India have completed a diploma or hold a degree.
· Youth in education and unemployed young males are overqualified for the jobs available to them. They have a preference for jobs in the formal sector and need support in connecting with the right employers in the formal sector.
· Due to lack of job opportunities in the formal sector there appears to be a trade-off between working in the informal sector or staying unemployed.
· For women not part of employment, education and training as well as those in employment, the problem is lack of essential skills to be employable in the formal sector. Thus, they need to be trained in foundational skills as well as technical skills along with support to connect with employers.
Intervention Module
The intervention module is built across multiple dimensions of actual skill enhancement, ensuring sustainability as well as functional ease in implementation.
We are focusing on a 3 step process framework for each persona:
1. Point of Contact: Raise awareness among the stakeholders through the appropriate mode of engagement
2. Skill Training: Identify the sectors with most demand in the upcoming future and the employment opportunities they provide and prioritize suitable job opportunities on the basis of aptitude, interest and demand
3. Financial Support and Employment: Identify and connect with appropriate agencies providing training.
1. Point of Contact
Primary objective of engagement with the stakeholders is to raise awareness about the benefits of upskilling and its importance. This is to be done at three levels:
A. Household Level: Refers to door to door intervention involving interactions with family members of the stakeholder to ensure maximum support and engagement. Word of mouth is the most common form of awareness. Having a low conversion rate initially is not an indication of the overall effectiveness of the program because getting inspired by the successes, more people would follow.
B. Community Level: Community is referred to as the setting for the intervention. As a setting, a community is primarily defined geographically and is the location(eg: particular slum in a city) which is the point of contact. Outreach initiatives at a community/locality level would involve setting up of information booths to raise awareness about the program
C. Partnerships: Partnerships with educational institutions like ITIs to engage with their students and determine gaps in employability
Post this, the urban poor need to understand the areas which they can engage in the job market and the apt skills which they require.
2. Skill Training:
Skill Training is where we are essentially focusing on the sectors and the probable job market that a prospective urban poor would like to get employed through upskilling. We look at two key aspects in the Skill Training Dimension:
· What are the types of skills that are required for a particular job?
i. Focus on Type of Skill
ii. Sectors for Skill Development
· What mode of learning is the most feasible and relevant?
Type of Skills:
i. Foundational Skills:
· Basic cognitive training - Skills would include basic arithmetic and literacy in English.
ii. Employability Skills:
· Technical skills training - Job specific skills
· Apprenticeship program - Collaborate with employers to provide hands on experience to ensure maximum learning.
iii. Entrepreneurial Skills:
· Entrepreneurship development program - Skill development of the self employed is essential to make them employers which in turn would generate more employment opportunities.
Identifying relevant sectors/ areas for skill development with potential future growth
· We have first broadly classified the various sectors of emergence and opportunities for the urban poor. Job opportunities in these sectors are identified by looking at the value chain of each of these sectors.
· Another key factor of choosing is that, ‘employers expect that by 2025, increasingly redundant roles will decline from being 15.4% of the workforce to 9% (6.4% decline), and that emerging professions will grow from 7.8% to 13.5% (5.7% growth) of the total employee base of company respondents (Source: World Economic Forum).’
· Therefore, we focus on transitioning the urban poor to the emerging job markets to ensure long term stability.
The National Skill Development Policy identifies 24 sectors that are likely to need more skilled workers. However, we focus on only 5 key sectors using the high demand/high supply methodology:
1. Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES)
The global trends that are currently emerging in the market are providing numerous opportunities to create jobs and this is highly likely to continue in all spheres. It is essential that these opportunities are utilised by the urban poor through proper skill training. IT and IT services are one of the most significant job creating sectors with approximately 8.73 lakh jobs being created in the 5 years.
2. Tourism & Hospitality
According to the Reports in IMacs, it is estimated that the India Travel & Tourism (T&T) industry will post Rs. 21,011 billion of economic activity by 2022. There are different areas to develop interpersonal and hard skills. 86% of the essential skills for hospitality managers are soft competencies. We have provided some of the essential hard and soft skills.
Soft Skills:
· Team leadership
· Coaching
· Problem solving
· Influence
Hard Skills:
· Food and beverage management
· Commercial acumen
· Sales and marketing skills
· Competency in all areas of hotel operations
· Human resource management
3. Renewable Energy
Our Government has set ambitious targets to generate approximately 160 Gigawatts of wind and solar power by 2022, and a study from the Council on Energy, Environment and Water and the Natural Resources Defence Council estimates that, to achieve these goals, India must create 330,000 new jobs over the next five years. Jobs in the Construction and Operations and Maintenance part of the value chain are. We focus on skilled jobs in solar, wind, biomass and hydro mass technologies located in rural areas since most of the semi-skilled job requirements can be fulfilled by the rural workforce. To be able to fill in the right people in the new jobs that are being created, we look at the key skills required.
· Fundamental Skills
· STEM Knowledge
· Cross Functionality
· Social Awareness
· Project Management
· Collaboration
4. Transportation and logistics
Logistics and transport management are mainstream management careers, where individuals will be faced with the full range of management challenges. A good segment of the Urban Poor can fit into this sector with ease, provided the majority of the skills are towards the soft side. Those with the right skill set, who are keen to make a difference, are likely to be in great demand. Skills:
· Fundamental Skills
· Employment Skills - IT Literacy and Management Information Systems
· General Management Skills
· People Management Skills
· Project Management
· Collaboration
5. Beauty and wellness
The beauty and wellness market in India has expanded at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of ~18.40% during the 2019-2024 period. There is a lack of professionally trained and skilled beauty and wellness service providers in the market, which has led to increased manpower costs. As a result, consumers have to pay exorbitant amounts to avail beauty and wellness services. This presents a major challenge for the growth of this market. Skills:
· Product and Counter Sales
· Slimming
· Rejuvenation
· Beauty Services
· Hair Salon
· Fitness Procedures
· Therapy Methodology
In the Wellness sector the relevant jobs would be
· Exercise Coach
· Operations Manager
· Receptionist, Sales executives
· Inventory manager (if they sell equipment)
· Backoffice: IT, Finance, HR
Mapping the skills with individuals
Apart from the mapping according to each sector & job, we also have to prioritize job roles on the basis of aptitude and matching interests. Ideal would be one where they have the aptitude and their interests match with our mapping. Prioritize on:
· Interests match, high aptitude
· Interests match, low aptitude
· High aptitude, Interests do not match
· Interests do not match, low aptitude
Mode of Skill Training:
Online mode: Would include cognitive skills training i.e., basic arithmetic, spoken English. The figure below shows the predicted increase in the number of smartphone users with internet access by 2025 indicating sufficient market size for online users. Relevant for the working population and NEET females as it saves time and money.
On premise without infrastructure: Training for jobs in retail, hospitality, classes for entrepreneurs, soft skills training. Relevant for students since the infrastructure part is already taken care of by the institute.
On premise with infrastructure: Technical skills training for specific roles ITES, automotive. Would require a lot of infrastructure for equipment. Setting up centres or partnerships with ITIs, educational institutes.
Financial Support and Employment
As the urban poor start out on the journey to upskill themselves, one of the most crucial parts and parcel of the process is having the right financial support in this entire period of upskilling as well with the opportunity to get employed.
I. Government:
A. Government Funded Program
In the year 2014, the government launched the Deendayal Antyodaya Yojana — National Urban Livelihoods Mission (DAY-NULM) — to provide gainful self-employment to the urban poor and other essential services. The Government has been able to bring a conversation rate of 50% to the workforce.
B. National Skill Development Co-operation
The National Skill Development Co-operation is instrumental in providing the following support:
· Financial Support
· Industry Partnership and Support
· Technical and Non-Technical Training Programs
· Entrepreneurial Goals
NSDC was mandated to train 150 million people as part of the National Skill Development Policy 2009, which set out a target of providing job skills to as many as 500 million by 2022.
II. Non- Profit Organization
A. Smile Foundation
Conduct the STeP which is a national level livelihood programme that trains urban underprivileged youth with market-oriented job skills such as English, basic computer, personality development, retail management, relevant soft skills etc. and makes them employed in retail and service sectors across India.
Currently more than 16,000 youth have been trained and 11,500 have been placed in over 140 brands through 33 operational projects across 16 states of India.
B. Samarthanam Trust
This trust has been contributing to this sector for more than the past 2 decades. The Trust has trained 15789 youths across 13 major cities with a placement record of 64%. The centers offer industry specific market driven training in different sectors like Hospitality, Retail, Garments, IT & ITES, Entrepreneurship and Business Management Skills. Technical and sector based skill training, like training in BPO and Call Centre operations, are designed to suit the needs of the industry. Training categories include tele-calling, communication skills, accent training, customer service, soft skills, client relations and conflict management.
III. Businesses
Corporates such as Zoho Corporation, take in urban/rural poor from Tier - 2/3 cities who cannot afford to get into colleges and universities under their social responsibility wing. They tag their initiative as Zoho Schools.
They focus on the four following domains:
· Technology
· Advanced Study
· Design Sense
· Business
The requirements for getting admitted are not hard and fast. Those who genuinely wish to level up and improve their livelihood, can apply to the school. Post the course, Zoho provides Job Offers to the best candidates.
MacAppStudio is a software firm that develops Mobile Software Application. The employees in the firm are hired not based on the resume but on the basis of the life story and their need to improve themselves. The company trains their employees and makes them job ready. The firm has delivered multiple national and international projects. They have impacted nearly 200 lives by providing them employment in the firm.
A lot of businesses are trying to implement similar structures to increase their labour force.
Meet The Thought Leaders
Shatakshi Sharma has been a management consultant with BCG and is Co- Founder of Global Governance Initiative with national facilitation of award- Economic Times The Most Promising Women Leader Award, 2021.
Prior to graduate school at ISB, she was Strategic Advisor with the Government of India where she drove good governance initiatives. She was also felicitated with a National Young Achiever Award for Nation Building. She is a part time blogger on her famous series-MBA in 2 minutes.
Naman Shrivastava is the Co-Founder of Global Governance Initiative. He has previously worked as a Strategy Consultant in the Government of India and is working at the United Nations - Office of Internal Oversight Services. Naman is also a recipient of the prestigious Harry Ratliffe Memorial Prize - awarded by the Fletcher Alumni of Color Executive Board. He has been part of speaking engagements at International forums such as the World Economic Forum, UN South-South Cooperation etc. His experience has been at the intersection of Management Consulting, Political Consulting, and Social entrepreneurship
Shreya Ravichandran is a consultant at McKinsey and Company, with a background in economics from Shri Ram College of Commerce. She loves problem-solving on social issues to make an impact on people's lives. She is also an avid musician and spends her free time experimenting different styles.
Meet The Authors (GGI Fellows)
Omkar Ingale is a Chemical Engineering graduate from IIT Bombay. He is not only passionate about food but also interesting food-based conversations. In the long run, he sees himself working on solutions to problems that eventually make the lives of common people easier, in India particularly. Currently he is working as an Analyst at Thoucentric, a startup providing consulting services in the CPG/FMCG sector.
Nithin Balaaji is pursuing Computer Science and Engineering Studies, at NIT Trichy. He firmly believes in creating, sharing, and serving to enhance our world, thereby leaving behind a legacy, which is the essence of a purposeful life. He constantly strives towards this goal in a multitude of roles and responsibilities, as a servant leader of the Students' Council at NIT Trichy, besides leading multiple projects and clubs, aimed at creating a positive difference in the lives of others. He is the National Finalist in the prestigious HSBC Business Case Competition 2021.
Mansi Garg is a final year Economics undergraduate at Hindu College, Delhi University. She enjoys working with diverse and international students. Therefore, she has been a part of the Harvard Summer School and is currently working as a project lead with an international pro-bono consulting organisation. She strongly believes that India has a huge potential for growth in the future and hence wants to work towards the unemployment crisis in India.
Disha Kouli is pursuing her Master's in Public Policy and specialising in Economic Policy at The University of Sydney. Disha firmly believes that one's identity should not define their access to quality education. Thus, she worked as a Teach for India fellow for 1.8 years. An alumnus at Teach For All - Global Girls Education Fellowship, Disha had the opportunity to interact, learn, and derive solutions for the challenges related to girls' access to education.
If you are interested to apply to GGI Impact Fellowship, you can access our application link here.
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