Digital Skill Building & Vocational Training
Skill Building to Enhance Employability

Digital Skill Building
India has attained progress in primary education with 1.5million schools and 250 million enrolments but it still lacks in higher education with just 20.7 million with only 24.3% of total enrolment. The current available capacity in industrial training is 4.3 million which is 201% less than the industrial requirement of 22 million skilled workforces annually in India. There is a large number of dropouts in education at an average age of 15 years especially female students along with poor literacy and many obsolete trainings provided which fails to provide jobs and industrial requirements. (Saini, 2015). In India, 90% of the jobs available are skill based but only 2% of the population (15-25 years) attain formal vocation training in comparison to 80% in the USA and 60% in South Asian countries. The overall estimation is to provide vocational training to 128 lakhs workforce but currently capacity available is only 31 Lakhs whereas India aims to provide vocational training to 50crs of workforce by 2022.
To meet out some of the skill gap in India, AADHAAR proposes to create a cadre of youths enabled with required skills. The beneficiaries of the training would be mainly underprivileged youth coming from disadvantaged backgrounds and territories, including people with disabilities, with a focus on women/young girls. The training curriculum, pedagogy, modalities vary from one site/location to the other. Some courses proposed would be of short duration, others run for several months (3 to 6), some would focus on specific programming languages, others offer professional training pathways and on digital literacy. The overall objective of the intervention is to ensure access to work for youth facing the risk of exclusion, who are NEET (not in education, employment or training), or people struggling with long term unemployment.
CURRENT PROJECTS
Digital Academy –Enriching Knowledge and Strengthening Capacities through Simplon Pedagogy in collaboration with Simplon.Co France. Funded By Capgemini
- Overall objective: To enable trainees of Capgemini Digital Academies to access jobs in the digital sector in India;
- Specific objective: To support five (5) Capgemini’s partners in designing and conducting training in line with the job market’s needs in India as per uniform quality standards (four (4) partners from year 1 and five (5) partners in total from year 2).
- Market Assessment Survey and Partners Assessment
- Pedagogical engineering
- Capgemini Partners’ team Training
- Network building
- Opening of four (4) Digital Academies powered by Simplon.co within the partners’ facilities
- Advocacy
- Opening of a Digital Academy Flagship-Mumbai
- Opening of a Simplon Digital Academy
- 180 staff trained
- 12,200 Trainees trained in the partners’ facilities
- Location: 30 sites in 11 cities
Duration: 3 years (01/12/2019 – 30/09/2022) Total Project Cost: INR 11.80 Crore
Objective:
Outline of Activities:
The number of beneficiaries:
Area of work:

“Digital Literacy programme in collaboration with CSC Academy funded by Capgemini
Duration: Dec 19 to Dec 22 Total Project Cost INR 7.21 Crore
Background:
As per Census 2011, there are 16.85 crore Rural Households covering a population of approximately 83 Crore. As per the 71st NSSO Survey on Education 2014, nearly 6% of rural households are having a computer. Among persons of the age group of 14-29 years in rural India, nearly 18% were able to operate a computer. Similarly, for the age group of 30-45 years, the percentage drops to 4% only. Further, for the age group of 46-60 years, the percentage is just more than 1%. This highlights that around 15 crore rural households (@6% of 16.85 Crore households) are not having computers and a significant number of these households are likely to be digitally illiterate.
Digital India The Government has launched ‘Digital India’ – A program to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. The Digital India program envisages ensuring that Government services are available to citizens electronically. It would also bring in public accountability through mandated delivery of Government’s services electronically; a Unique ID and e-Pramaan based on authentic and standard interoperable, integrated government applications and databases. Digital India aims to provide the much-needed thrust to the nine pillars of growth areas, namely
- Broadband Highways,
- Universal Access to Mobile Connectivity,
- Public Internet Access Programme,
- e-Governance: Reforming Government through Technology,
- e-Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services,
- Information for All,
- Electronics Manufacturing,
- IT for Jobs
- Early Harvest Programmes
Under the ‘e-Kranti – Electronic Delivery of Services’, one of the initiatives includes
‘Technology for Education – e-Education’ under which ‘Digital Literacy program’ at the
The national level is also envisaged.
Digital literacy is therefore a key component of the Government’s vision of building an empowered society as envisaged under the “Digital India initiative”. Spinoff effects of digital literacy especially in the context of rural India would address a number of socio-economic issues.
The rural population can gain immensely from ‘Digital Literacy’. ‘Digital Literacy’ would bring the benefits of ICT to daily lives of the rural populations in the major thrust areas of Healthcare, Livelihood generation and Education.
Objective: To train One Lakh candidates on Digital Literacy & English-Speaking Course across 11 Cities in Urban /Semi-urban Areas as
- Digital Literacy Course is under the aegis of Pradhan Mantri Gramin Digital Saksharta Abhiyan, Certificate is issued by impanelled Govt. Exam agency
- For English Speaking Course, the course certificate is issued by the British Council, English Strokes & CSC
List of Cities where the project would be implemented
- Mumbai
- Pune
- Kolkata
- Trichy
- Salem
- Chennai
- Bhubaneshwar
- Gandhinagar
- NCR
- Banglaloregaluru
- Hyderabad
USHA SILAI School
AADHAAR is associated with USHA International in implementing its Silai School Model in District Kangra of Himachal Pradesh. AADHAAR is coordinating 10 Classical Silai Schools and 20 Satellite Silai Schools in Fatehpur and Nurpur Blocks of District Kangra since February 2019. 60 women/girls have benefitted from this activity. 30 Women Entrepreneurs are earning their livelihoods by providing Silai Training and Stitching clothes to rural women. These 30 entrepreneurs have been provided training by USHA Master Trainers and are kept up to date through regular skill interventions.
Names of Villages where Classical Silai Schools are located in Kangra
S. No. |
Village |
Block |
District |
1 |
Samkar |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
2 |
Gurial |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
3 |
Rehan |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
4 |
Siyal |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
5 |
Hara |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
6 |
Dak |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
7 |
Harnota |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
8 |
Garan |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |
9 |
Ganoh |
Nurpur |
Kangra |
10 |
Raja Ka Talab/ Sujjal |
Fatehpur |
Kangra |


PINE NEEDLE HANDICRAFT PROMOTION
AADHAAR in Himachal Pradesh has been active in promoting innovative livelihood solutions. Himachal Incharge was instrumental in promoting Pine Needle Handicraft in the Region. AADHAAR Field Incharge is qualified Master Trainer in Pine Needle Handicraft and trained over 1000 women in craft. AADHAAR proposes to take this craft for national level replication.