World Youth Skills Day: Starting from the President, everyone is doing their bit

It is World Youth Skills Day and Skill India is also celebrating its first anniversary on the occasion. Skill India is one of the pet campaigns by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is aiming at making India top country for providing workforce.

India is inching towards providing vocational training to youth of the country, making them learn skills, which will also provide livelihood to them, especially in the rural sector.

The year 2015-16 has been quite remarkable for India as over 1.04 crore youth were trained under various initiative of ‘Skill India’, marking 36.8% growth compared to the year before.

Modi also regards skill development as a national priority and as per experts, through concentrated efforts and more awareness and centres, India can make this mission a roaring success.

One of the best decisions taken in this regard was creating a separate ministry for Skills, which brought Skills, Vocational Training and Livelihoods as an important means of nation-building to the forefront.

Apart from the government, many private institutions have been training the youth and imparting various skills. Many have also set up centres and colleges to generate employment and give trained youth jobs.

There are many success stories that do the rounds in the corridors of such colleges, inspiring many others to participate in Skill India and improve the livelihood.

For instance, Skill India is very close to President Pranab Mukherjee’s heart and he has ensured that 1500 employees at the sprawling Rashtrapati Bhavan, get certified under the Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL) component of Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojana (PMKVY), across 18 job roles.

The program has ensured that the people working at the President’s house get oriented to their job roles, are assessed on their existing skills and then certified basis the National Skills Qualification Framework.

Apart from the President, ICICI and Ola, top employers and companies in India, have also made sure to impart skills.

ICICI Academy, a nation-wide skill building initiative, has been improving the employment prospects of India’s youth.

In fiscal 2016, ICICI opened 11 new centres and more than 25,000 youth were trained at the with representation of women at 41%.

Now, ICICI Academy for Skills has 22 centres, including 10 centres exclusively for women.

There are various skills imparted here such as tractor mechanic, lab assistant at diagnostic centres, two & three wheeler service technician and retail sales, communication, etiquette & grooming and financial literacy, etc.

Meanwhile, Ola has signed several MoUs with different governments to train youth. They have so far committed to training 3.2 lakh youth across these states.

The taxi aggregator has partnered with the National Safai Karamcharis Finance and Development Corporation to support entrepreneurship, skill development training and self-defence courses for Safai Karamcharis and Scavengers.- May 2016.

It also inked an MoU with Andhra Pradesh government and commited investments of Rs 150 crore in the next three years to train youth and provide safe travel. Ola will provide skill development training to 50,000 driver entrepreneurs over the next 3 years.