Literacy India-Dell Technologies’ Future Skills Project Transforming Lives of Several Youth

Literacy India-Dell Technologies’ Future Skills Project Transforming Lives of Several Youth. That’s what we will be talking about today.

Literacy India-Dell Technologies’ Future Skills Project Transforming Lives of Several Youth

Literacy India and Dell Technologies have been providing golden opportunities to several youth, via Future Skills Project. Training in technology skills help young adults to become coders, entrepreneurs and find employment in leading organizations through this project.

Project impact spans an estimated 5 states and over 50% project beneficiaries are girl students, with several first-generation learners.

Building on Sustainable Development Goals – Quality Education, Gender Equality and Decent Work and Employment; Literacy India, an NGO, focuses on bringing qualitative change. Emphasizing on education and skill development in an age of rapid technological change the NGO has partnered with Dell Technologies to impact technology training for youth across 5 states.

The Future Skill training for students covers courses on Python coding, digital marketing, web designing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and developing computational skills. Under the project, Literacy India together with Dell Technologies has helped over 9000 youth to gain access to foundation courses, coding languages and programing skills. They have also aided 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.”

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, programs and bots. Several of them turned entrepreneurs while 50+ students found jobs in leading organizations; which speaks for 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.”

Further, Captain Indraani Singh added, “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.”

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; providing easy access to technology and online services for others in his village. 

Pallavi Verma, a resident of Gurgaon, Haryana is another beneficiary of the Future Skills Project. She was able to set up her own skills academy with the support of Literacy India’s team allowing her to earn a sustainable income, simultaneously, 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, etc. With the support of over 50 Industry experts, the program, recently, completed 275788 learning hours.

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

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