CSR: Transforming Lives of 9000 Youth in Support of Digital India

Training in technology skills helps young adults to become Coders, Entrepreneurs and find employment in leading organizations. 

New Delhi: Building on Sustainable Development Goals – Quality Education, Gender Equality and Decent Work and Employment, Literacy India, an NGO focused on bringing qualitative change by Education & Skilling in an age of rapid technological change partnered with Dell Technologies to impact technology training to youth across 5 states. 

The Future Skills training for students covered courses on Python coding, digital marketing, web designing, artificial intelligence, machine learning & developing computational skills. Under the Project, Literacy India together with Dell Technologies helped over 9000 youth gain access to foundation courses, coding languages and programming skills, by providing them with educational and financial support, enabling them to become first-generation technical learners, with 56% of the beneficiaries being women. 

Speaking on the success of this initiative Vikhyat Singh, Senior Director, Dell Technologies said: “We are delighted to have made an impact in areas where it was most needed with Literacy India. Digital skills are a must for our youth, children and women in the 21^st century and therefore we’ve been working with Literacy India since 2007 to increase access to such pertinent knowledge for the underprivileged. Through our work together, we’ve been able to impact over two lakh lives across 15 states in India. Through our Future Skills Campaign, we’ve been able to directly impact over 62,500 lives and help citizens with employability issues. We are delighted to see the scale of impact and are excited about the revolution this project can bring in the years to come. That means the world to us.”  

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Captain Indraani Singh, Managing Trustee, Literacy India said “Future Skills Project has been a game changer for its thousands of beneficiaries, 50% of whom were girls. It is heartening to see young learners bring their skills to life by developing tech games, programmes and bots. Several of them turned entrepreneurs while 50+ students found jobs in leading organizations which speaks to the success of this initiative. We are thankful to Dell for their commitment and support to this project, and expect to positively impact several thousand people in the years to come. ”

“The biggest solace is that every person under our programmatic embrace who is in need of education and empowerment will receive utmost support to attain their best potential and later to become a responsible citizen,” Captain Indraani Singh shared.

Mahadev Ramani, a resident of Bokaro, Jharkhand and a beneficiary of the Literacy India and Dell Technologies project, was able to start his own computer centre and earn a livelihood through his acquired skills.  Mahadev now operates a local computer centre in his village which has also eased access of technology and online services for others in his village.  

Pallavi Verma, a resident of Gurgaon, Haryana and another beneficiary of the Future Skills Project, was able to set-up her own skills academy with the support of Literacy India’s team. 

Pallavi’s centre is a local success which allows her to earn a sustainable income while promoting digital skills and providing computer-access to children from low-income households.

By setting-up Dell Technology Labs in schools and community centres, Literacy India built spaces that allowed students to explore, experiment and create learning opportunities. In addition to classroom teaching, several exposure visits to organizations such as Dell, Nokia, CIDC, WitZeal among others.  With the support of over 50 Industry experts, the programme completed 275788 learning hours. 

52 students from this initiative are presently employed with leading organizations such as British Telecom, Cadence Electrical & Engineers, VNC Accessories among others.  Students also developed functional mobile applications such as Toko, that are available on mobile play store.  

The Future Skills Initiative also benefited the wider ecosystem, today the programme is being run in Government Schools of Haryana; MD University shall customize Future Skills curriculum for Girl Students; partnerships with State Institute of Advanced Studies in Teacher Education and organizations such as Code.org is helping students and educators.