Unemployable Youth; BRIGHT Days Ahead!
India has the largest, youngest population in the world. However, it is also the most unemployable population. According to certain reports, about 57% of India's youth suffer from some degree of unemployability, while 53% of the employed youth lack specific skill sets.
According to industry experts, unemployability refers a state when individuals who have to be trained by the industry in basic skills which they should have acquired through college and university education.
It is a fact that the curriculum is outdated in most places and equipments used were obsolete. At this point of time, it is not ideal to just fight the system to change, which is going to take a long as there need to fill multiple holes and it has to be done simultaneously. In a country like India, this would mean a huge task.
One of the solutions would be to induce students at young age to learn to be proactive. The story of Khadija Niazi is a great example of how students at very tender age can explore the world through the power of technology. Khadija Niazi; she was only 10 years old when she first took the ‘artificial intelligence’ online course. Later Khadija received an invitation from ‘Udacity’ to enroll in their new courses – physics was next, she completed it with highest distinction at the age of 11 years.
Another great example is that of Ekalavya. In the Hindu epic Mahābhārata, Eklavya is a young prince of the Nishadha, a confederation of jungle tribes in Ancient India, who aspires to study archery in the gurukul of Dronacharya (Drona). After being rejected by Drona on account of his low caste, Eklavya embarked upon a program of self-study in the presence of a clay image of Drona. With discipline, Eklavya achieves a level of skill superior to that of others who Drona trained. We have to agree that a lot of students would not know that such thing can be done! The role edupreneurs come into picture here.
Edupreneurs can spread the message to every nook and corner of the nation that any youth, school going or not, can learn skills with a little effort. When we let this message ring from every village and hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of the youth would be termed as employable or at least possess skills that can be molded into for job-needs.
Youth need to be made aware that there are leaders in them. Once they believe that they are eagles meant to fly, they would automatically embrace the spirit of Ekalavya or Khadija Niazi. Project Bright is such an initiative in rural Kerala. The project, instead of seeing children through the lens of a normal distribution curve—some kids are smart and some less smart— sees that every child is capable, every child is a leader. This paradigm changes everything.
The project is an attempt to transform the college going students of Bright Tally Academy into highly professional, employable candidates in the highly competitive job market. The project brings in home-grown as well as international training tools and methods to empower every student of the institute to take up leadership roles in their lives and in the society.
The project is a long term intervention which would get entwined along the regular curriculum thereby bettering every student’s performance in their respective courses as well as in extra-curricular activities. The project aims to bring in fresh thinking process in students’ mind by exposing them to international learning experience, making them leaders and doers than just passive listeners.
Project Bright aims to spread its scope across the nation through small steps and sometimes through big leaps with the help of technology.
