Nayee Disha (“New Direction”)

Objective

To enhance employment skills of youth living in rural areas in India, thereby increasing their chance of employment and/or self-employment.

Overview and Main Activities

Nayee Disha offers training in four skills areas: technical literacy, vocational training, life skills training and subsistence living training. This core training is complemented by entrepreneurship development training aimed at encouraging participants to start their own microenterprises and become self-employed. Programmes target candidates from adolescents to youths.

1. Technical literacy: Enables students in upper primary school to gain hands-on learning experience and attain marketable/employable skills for free to equip them with technical skills such as embroidery, carpentry and pottery. The hour-long classes are held once a week for up to three months. The training helps students earn while they learn, thus addressing the barrier of poverty. This programme targets rural students likely to drop out from school.
2. Vocational: Targets youth on the verge of entering the job market (primarily those not currently enrolled in school), and is delivered through classroom and hands-on training, complemented by placement and self-employment support. Training spans a wide array of job functions, such as mobile and tractor repair, stitching and retail management. The Foundation partners with social enterprise LabourNet to deliver the training, which is not free but subsidized under Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) funding of Jubilant.
3. Life Skills: Provides youth with soft skills training such as presentation and workplace skills and computer literacy. Training targets college youth and aims to improve their employability and prepare them for the world of work. Training is not free, but the fee is subsidized under CSR funding of Jubilant.
4. Subsistence living: Encourages young, unemployed, rural women to open microenterprises to earn their own living and add to their family’s total income. They are trained to form self-help groups (SHGs) of 10-20 local women and to create linkages to banks. SHG members make regular savings for a few months, then open a bank account. Based on SHG savings and performance (meetings, bookkeeping, internal loaning, etc.), banks grade the SHG and provide a loan to start individual or group enterprises. The entire group is responsible for the repayment of the loan. There is no fee to participate in the programme.

Programme partners include local governments, NABARD, LabourNet and the National Skill Development Corporation.

Success Factors and Challenges

Most critical success factors:

• Location of training centres in semi-rural areas
• CSR and partner support

Main challenges:

• Student mobilization due to their ability/inability to pay; lack of willingness by youth to get placed in urban areas; whether companies offer better salaries to trained (vs. untrained) candidates for entry-level jobs; whether companies have policies to hire trained but inexperienced youth.

Recommendations for Others

Under the CSR umbrella, Jubilant has managed to adopt the best possible methods for running a sustainable programme targeting adolescent youth and women to bring a quality change in their life. The main ingredients for running such a training programme are fund generation, sustainability and a selection of courses that offers employment linkages.

Replicability and Scalability

How easily could other organizations implement this initiative?
Difficult: Resource mobilization and fund generation are key aspects of the programme, along with extensive research on trades suitable for job prospects.

How easily can this initiative be expanded to include a larger number of participants?
Difficult: Allocating funds specific to sustainable training programmes targeted to youth with tight financial conditions is very challenging.

About the Organization

Website: www.jubilantbhartia.com
Sector: Chemicals
Size (number of employees): 10,000-50,000
Headquarters: New Delhi, India

For Further Engagement

Contact name: Vivek Prakash
Contact position: General Manager- CSR
Email: [email protected]