Dell Technologies, American India Foundation (AIF), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and the University of Mumbai have come together to launch the ‘Project Future Ready’ programme that aims to provide career guidance to college students and make them more employable.
With AIF as an implementation partner and NSDC as the skilling partner, the project will benefit 100,000 students in Mumbai and Delhi NCR, 60 per cent of whom will be girls. Dell Technologies is committed to its goal of ensuring that 50 per cent of those benefitting from its social and educational programmes will be girl, every year, for the next ten years.
Students will be provided career mentoring, opportunity to leverage online skilling platforms and a chance to acquire market aligned skills training to encourage an entrepreneurial mind-set and also make them more employable. On completion of the program, the students will receive a certification from NSDC and the University of Mumbai.
About 200 college faculty members of the University of Mumbai’s Garware Institute of Career Education and Development (GICED) will be certified as multi-skilled career mentors for the project. Each of these trained faculties will further engage with 500 youth via career-guidance workshops in colleges affiliated with the University of Mumbai. These students will also receive training from NSDC through its eskillindia.org platform, a digital skilling initiative, to develop employability skills through customized courses for interview preparedness, communication, soft skills, etc.
The project hopes to “encourage students to enhance their skillsets, be future job-creators and contribute towards a brighter and a prosperous India,” according to Alok Ohrie, president and managing director, Dell Technologies India.
Mathew Joseph, country director, American India Foundation feels that it is time to “prepare India’s future workforce for evolving workplace requirements.”
Through this collaboration, Manish Kumar, MD & CEO, NSDC feels, the young workforce will enhance their “ability to secure a job” and gain “an edge in the work environment”.
The project will further work towards introducing remote employment opportunities by establishing a state-of-the-art Digital Centre of Excellence in Delhi NCR to provide market-aligned skills training and access to employment in the IT space, to 300 marginalsed youth.
The centre will be equipped with high-end multimedia studios and computer laboratories for practical trainings. Dell Technologies will also support these candidates with desktops, tablets, high-speed internet allowance and other necessary equipment to enable them to access the training more efficiently via Dell’s skills TV platform.
