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HSBC launched HSBC Skills for Life, a skill development programme that aims to provide young people and women with requisite skillsets to enable them to earn a sustainable livelihood. HSBC has committed a sum of INR100 crore towards this programme and aims to cover 75,000 young people and women spread over the next five years.
The HSBC Skills for Life programme was announced on 12 November 2015 in London in a joint statement by the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UK Prime Minister David Cameron.
Through this flagship skill programme HBSC will support non-profit organisations in the following three focus areas.
1. Employment linked skills development of disadvantaged young people – HSBC will work with non-profit organisations on enterprise and employment linked training wherein young people will be taught skills that can help them earn a sustainable livelihood. The programme will map demand with industry requirements and link skill building with relevant jobs. It will also develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem through collaborations with organisations working in this space.
2. Upskilling of educators and teachers – The programme will focus on enhancing the skills of educators and teachers and will support different scalable models that include Train the Trainers (TOT) approach, digitisation of content, curriculum translation into different languages etc. to scale learning and multiply impact.
3. Women’s empowerment through livelihood enhancement – The key focus on this vertical will be to enhance the capacities and improving the livelihood potential of rural and urban disadvantaged women through financial literacy and building entrepreneurial capabilities.
HSBC also announced an INR 50 Crore partnership with the Swades Foundation to roll out the first vertical of the HSBC Skills for Life programme. This partnership will provide employment linked skills training to 30,000 disadvantaged young people over the next five years.
The key pillars of the partnership with Swades Foundation are:
4. Strong emphasis on screening, partner selection and evaluation: Partnerships are being forged with reputed academic institutions to create a transparent and effective screening and evaluation process that takes into account regional differences. Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) will be the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) partner for this Programme.
5. Senior Advisory Group for project review and selection: An Advisory Group has been set up to review and select short-listed skill development projects. It will also provide key industry and sector insight and inputs to the programme. This will further the cause of employment and entrepreneurship for disadvantaged young people. The Advisory Group comprises of eminent industry and sector leaders. They are Anu Aga, Former Executive Chairperson, Thermax Group; Manish Sabharwal, Co-Founder & Chairman, TeamLease Services; Rati Forbes, Director, Forbes Marshall Ltd.; Richard Rekhy, CEO, KPMG India; Ronnie Screwvala, Founder Trustee, Swades Foundation; Sanjiv Mehta, CEO & MD, Hindustan Unilever Limited; K Satish Reddy, Chairman, Dr. Reddy’s Laboratories; Stuart P Milne, Group General Manager & CEO, HSBC India; S Ramadorai, Chairman, National Skills Development Agency & Chairman, National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC); Sunil Sood, MD & CEO, Vodafone India Ltd.
6. Focus on priority sectors: The programme will support skill development in eight priority high growth sectors: Retail; BFSI (banking, financial services and insurance); Beauty and Wellness; Tourism, Travel and Hospitality; Healthcare; Transportation & Logistics; IT & ITES; and Electronic and IT Hardware;
The second and third verticals will be initiated from 2016 onwards in partnership with other NGOs.
Stuart P Milne, Group General Manager and Chief Executive Officer, HSBC India, said: “I am delighted to launch this Programme today. Skills development is strategic need for India which fits very well with HSBC’s global focus on education for young peole from disadvantaged communities. Our measure of success will be quality outcomes, in particular the number of young peole we train who find long term employment, helping them to achieve their hopes and dreams. This flagship Programme is made possible by the support of our customers across India and I, on behalf of those who will benefit from HSBC Skills for Life, thank you for your support.”
Ronnie Screwvala, Founder Trustee, Swades Foundation, said: “We are delighted to partner with the HSBC Skills for Life programme to further economic opportunity for disadvantaged young people. It is a reinforcement of our commitment of enabling the young people of India to build a better and brighter future for themselves, and a step forward towards creating One India – an India that is not marred by the rural and urban divide.”.
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