Skill Training and Livelihoods
From the start of APSA’s work with urban poor youth in the slums of East Bengaluru in 1992, it was observed that at least 30-40% of youth from disadvantaged backgrounds, first generation literates, or those from ethnic and religious minority communities tended to drop out of high school due to poverty, inability to cope with academics (particularly first generation literates) and requirement from older girl children to stay back at home to care for younger siblings. The lack of a school final certificate meant that such youth could not get admission to vocational training courses, for which the first criterion is a school pass certificate. The high cost of external training courses, distance from the home and the fact that most courses were in English, were further deterrents.
This resulted in youth going into casual work or other under-paid work, mostly in the unorganized sector – such as daily wage labourers, loaders, small pushcart vendors, etc. They worked in hazardous conditions with no protective gear, exploitation from employers and middlemen and no statutory or medical benefits. This adversely impacted the quality of their life, health and economy and led to young people getting into crime, violence, addiction to alcohol and drugs, gang wars, theft and other such anti-social behaviour. For young women, it resulted in violence against them in the home, early marriage and motherhood.
APSA believes that skill and knowledge are driving forces for economic growth and social development, and that good livelihoods result in financial self-sufficiency and higher respect from society. Empowering young men and women with opportunities for skill development would help them reach long-term sustainable livelihoods, foster entrepreneurship, and help grow their careers.
Kaushalya Skill Training Centre
The plight of youth seeking decent livelihoods without having adequate skills led to the establishment of the Kaushalya Skill Training Centre in 1992. Kaushalya was aimed to bring job-oriented vocational training within the reach of such disadvantaged youth from urban slums, to enable them to access decent employment opportunities, that would contribute as much to their financial stability as it would to their sense of self-worth and dignity. Started in a small building in Islampura slum, Kaushalya initially offered 6-month courses in 2-Wheeler Mechanism, Tailoring and Screen Printing as well as Home Management skills for domestic workers.
Later on, as the market demand was seen with the emergence of larger numbers of shopping malls and need for trained youth to be employed in these, and as more youth began enrolling for training, the courses were expanded to include Electronic Assembly Work, Desk Top Publishing (DTP), Computer Office Applications, Beauty Care and Graphic Design (discontinued from April 2018). In particular, skill training in tailoring and beauty care were extremely popular among girls from minority communities such as Muslim families who, bound by cultural and religious practices, would not allow them to go out and seek training or employment. All APSA’s courses are offered free of cost to youth aged 18-30, and at least 25% of youth who enrol for them are referred by Government Homes, Child Welfare Committees or other NGOs. In the early years of training, it was mostly boys who enrolled for the courses, as many parents were hesitant to send their girls. However, through community mobilization, word of mouth and role modelling of the few young women that did enrol, more families began to send their girls for the training. Today, 60% of all APSA’s vocational skill trainees are girls and women.
Community Training Centres
Value Additions to Skill Training
Over the course of the skill training project, APSA also realized that youth needed to learn additional skills in spoken English, attending interviews and managing incomes after getting jobs. Further, youth needed skills crucial to a new work environment that could throw up challenges for youth from slums such as caste/ class discrimination, low language or communication skills, and low self-esteem, causing them to drop out from jobs. APSA therefore introduced value additions to the skill training courses in the form of child and gender rights awareness, information on harm from alcohol and substance abuse, lifeskills and sexual health education, spoken English, financial literacy, workplace behaviour and skills, political awareness and citizenship rights, worker rights education, job placement support and pre- and post-placement counselling. In later years, self-defence was also included, particularly for women trainees.
APSA’s skill training is unique in that 75% of the courses are practical-based and 25% theory, enabling trainees from disadvantaged families to better grasp training inputs. Trainees are also taken on exposure visits to local markets, exhibitions, job fairs, corporate and other companies and other NGOs to give them an idea of market opportunities, costing, production and quality control. These visits also help to give trainees a real-world exposure to adult work life, organizational structures and employee behaviour. In both Bengaluru and Hyderabad, trainees come not only from the twin cities, but also from rural areas surrounding it, and enrol for APSA’s training. Those coming from far-off places are provided with board and accommodated in APSA’s institutional shelters. For boys, APSA’s skill training is seen as a chance to learn a skill that will give them avenues for better jobs and pay, while for girls, these skills are considered an added asset to their other homemaking skills by prospective bridegrooms and their families, besides being a source of income.
In order to give trainees role models to motivate them to complete their training, APSA invites corporate personnel to visit the training centres to speak to trainees on marketing, career management and workplace behaviour. These volunteers also teach special components of courses like computer applications, soft skills, and presentation skills.
APSA uses various strategies to create awareness around the skill training courses and mobilize youth for enrolment. These include tent drives, alumni referrals, community drives (door-to-door, enrolment drives in colleges and auto rickshaw drives), advertisement in local newspapers and social media, information to families and local area leaders and to Resident Welfare Associations of apartment complexes, as the owners would pass on the information to their domestic maids and other daily wage workers. APSA also has an informal Alumni network of 200-300 former trainees who provide motivation for trainees, provide updates to APSA’s skill training curriculum, come as resource persons for training programs and provide job information to new trainees or employ them in their entrepreneurial ventures.
APSA’s Various Skill Training Projects
APSA has provided free and quality skill training to over 15,000 youth in Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Today, APSA has approximately 15 training centres offering all the above skills and trains between 2,500-3,000 youth every year. APSA’s network with local businesses and companies ensures placement of at least 70% of trainees who successfully complete the courses. Most get into jobs with starting salaries of about INR 10,000 a month, going up to INR 40,000. Many trainees have gone on to purchase bikes, high-end laptops, have moved into better homes, enrolled for higher education, got married or started their own businesses.
APSA has received the support of the following organizations to run its skill training programs:
Tech Mahindra Foundation ‘SMART’ program
Under the TMF ‘SMART’ (Skills for Market Training) program run at Hyderabad since October 2013, APSA offers skill training in Computer Applications, Customer Relations Management (CRM), Medical Coding & Billing, ITES-BPO, Retail Assistant & Sales Services, and Tally Accounting. The program is run in 2 skill training centres and over the past 7 years, has trained and job-placed over 6,000 youth in entry level jobs in Hyderabad city with salaries ranging from INR 15,000-20,000 per month. Under the project, APSA Hyderabad also accesses the services of eVan – the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s mobile Employment Van – to disseminate information on job openings in private and public sectors to its trainees.
Saksham and JOVT projects
Both the Saksham and JOVT projects are implemented by APSA through Plan India.
The Saksham project is implemented with support from Deutsche Bank in Bengaluru and Bank of America in Hyderabad. Skills offered include Tailoring, Beauty Care, Basic Computer Applications, DTP, Retail Assistance and Tally ERP 9. The Job Oriented Vocational Training (JOVT) project, supported by DXC Technologies, trains youth in Computer Applications and Beauty Care. The two projects are run from 14 skill training centres since 2017 (including 2 Centres in Kodihalli Village, Kanakpura where APSA has it’s Suraksha Shelter) and have together trained nearly 2,000 youth, 60% of them girls, and ensured placement of 70% trainees in jobs with starting salaries of INR 5,000-15,000 per month.
Smile Foundation STeP program
Supported by Smile Foundation, the Smile Twin e-Learning (STeP) program has been run by APSA Bengaluru since 2015 in 1 Centre, training youth in Computers and Sales & Retail Management. APSA recently started a Beauty Care training centre for training girls in the skill, but this had to close down due to lack of funds.
McAfee Foundation
McAfee has supported a one-year skill training program under APSA’s Suraksha project, to train 105 rural community women in 3 batches in Tailoring skills. The project will also award 30 best trainees with sewing machines so they can establish themselves in self-employment ventures.
