Giving Compass' Take:

• The author examines the plight of young Indians as the economic landscape of the country changes. The Reddy Foundation provides key takeaways about young Indians after launching a high-quality skills training initiative. 

• The four takeaways from the initiative offer promising insight as to the future of young Indians.  Are there ways that initiatives such as GROW can be ongoing or share best practices with other organizations focused on the same issues? 

• Read more about the power of India's youngest population to advance the nation. 

In the 2017 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) – the largest citizen-led survey in India and the only annual source of information on children’s learning outcomes – it concluded that unless young adults are equipped with the knowledge, skills, and opportunities to support themselves, their families, and their communities, India’s much awaited ‘demographic dividend’ will not materialize.

Despite the availability of easy funding/CSR supported programs, most youth are still facing career mobility challenges, emphasising the fact that only 2-3% of the national population is skilled, compared to our Korea (96%), Japan (80%), Germany (75%), UK (68%) and China (40%) counterparts; This is not the best utilization of the nation’s limited resources.

Reddy’s Foundation’s experience of working in this sector for the last 18 years had its immense learnings. In 2016, we launched the GROW initiative that delivers high-quality skills training for youth to help them get better skills and better jobs. It was designed to meet the skilling gap in a cost-effective manner at scale. Looking back at the last 2 years, we had numerous challenges and successes, but gathered 5 key learnings to share with India’ ecosystem players working to improve livelihoods:

  1. Core Employability Skills are helping youths attain better jobs
  2. Leveraging Data Analytics to Map Market Demand and Supply
  3. Despite a well-validated theory of change, successful placements depend on a complex set of social factors. 
  4. Accomplishing Full Centre Capacity 

Read the full article about the success of Indian youth by Pranav Kumar Choudhary at avpn