India CSR News Network
NEW DELHI: Vedanta, India’s leading diversified natural resources company is aligned with the UN’s International Youth Day 2016 Theme: The Road to 2030: Eradicating Poverty and Achieving Sustainable Consumption and Production. Vedanta provided over 5,800 youth with vocational skills training while over 2,900 youth were linked to earning opportunities in FY 2015-16 and 375 youth were engaged under micro enterprise development in India & Africa.
The company enacts the vision of Chairman, Mr. Anil Agarwal to ensuring poverty eradication through a strong focus on skilling the youth and providing employment.
“Skill building equals nation building. I am gratified that all the businesses at Vedanta support the youth in our operational areas in terms of building vocational skills, which provides employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and enables progress of the communities,” says Mr. Anil Agarwal, Chairman, Vedanta.
Vedanta’s Lanjigarh operations launched the Yuva Pragati Kendra (YPK), based on a very unique model encompassing counselling, coaching and training the rural youth for government and non-government jobs, competitive exams and interviews. The objective of the YPK is to ensure 100% employability to the rural youth through skill enhancement.
The outreach of the YPK programme has extended to the peripheral villages in the gram panchayats of Chhattarpur, Champadeipur, Lanjigarh & Trilochanpur and over 1,000 young individuals have been enrolled till date with the YPK. The process to gain access is well-laid out and simple, interested candidates are encouraged to fill forms and attend coaching provided free of cost to enable them to face competition and interviews. The computer literate graduate youngsters are encouraged to join the Rural BPO training centre at YPK with placement opportunity after six months of training.
The Vedanta—Sesa Technical School (STS) in Goa has till date trained 1,245 students by imparting technical knowledge and providing vocational training, thereby enhancing their opportunities for securing jobs or being self-employed.
The Cairn Centre of Excellence is a premier world-class vocational training center and a Cairn India flagship initiative in Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Cairn India’s Cairn Enterprise Centre (CEC), a vocational training center in Barmer, was established in the year 2007 and since its inception, a total of about 12,000 students have been trained in various vocational and enterprise development skills.
Vedanta Limited’s Bharat Aluminium Limited Company, (BALCO), has partnered with IL&FS, one of India’s leading infrastructure development and finance companies for setting up Vedanta Skill School at Korba, Chhattisgarh to impart employment linked training to the marginalized sections of society, training nearly 4000 youth.
At Sterlite Copper, one of Vedanta’s group companies, the ‘Tamira Muthukkal’ project has the objective to mobilize, motivate and train unemployed, unskilled youth and facilitate suitable employment linkages. Initiated with the IL&FS skills school programme it offers courses such as Domestic BPO and Electrician, and was initiated in September 2014. Over 80 students completed their training, of which 50% were employed.
Vedanta assists empowering women in local communities by supporting Self Help Groups. Vedanta’s over 2,800 self-help groups (SHGs) reached 38,000 women, offering training in tailoring, stitching, local crafts, animal husbandry and organic farming, with an aim to open doors to income generation opportunities.
For instance, at Vedanta’s Jharsuguda operations, in this year, 220 girls in 6 villages were provided with training for tailoring. Similarly, several women of Vedanta’s ‘Subhalaxmi Cooperative’ Project were trained on different farm and non-farm trades.
Vedanta conducts high impact skilling programmes as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility. These programmes and initiatives not only help in proactively engaging with the communities, but also help in boosting incomes, thereby improving the economy.
At a time when the India’s economy is on an upward trend, it is critical to optimize the demographic dividend for a sustainable, broad-based economic growth. The youth comprises of over 50% of India’s total population. While the Government has launched innovative outreach schemes like the National Skill Development Mission and National Policy for Skill Development & Entrepreneurship, Vedanta facilitates programmes with an aim for the future generation to find employment in skilled sectors.
Vedanta believes in the philosophy skilling empowers the youth to integrate with the mainstream economy, and it gives a significant fillip to the economy itself by providing trained manpower to industry.
