STFC: How to drive impact in the line of business
With an aim to convert the corporate social responsibility, STFC adopted an impact lens for the same sector their financial products and services are aimed at – transportation and logistics. Mobilizing resources to bridge the skill gap in the industry, STFC trained more than 35,000+ people across India to become skilled commercial drivers.
The STFC Story
STFC was set up with the objective of offering the common man a host of products and services that would be helpful to him on his path to prosperity. Over the last few years, while their financial products and solutions did help the logistics and transportation industry, a host of external factors adversely affected the number and quality of truck drivers – the primary human capital.
All these factors have contributed to reduce the desirability of truck driving as a profession and created a shortage of skilled drivers in the country. About 28% of the 8.5 million trucks in the country are currently idle, with the shortage projected to rise to about 50% by 2022. To address the shortage of skilled commercial vehicle drivers and create dignified working opportunities for them in other segments, STFC and Samhita curated a flagship program that aims to augment livelihoods through vocational and skill training.
IMPACT ACROSS THE PEOPLE, PLANET, PROFIT (PPP) FRAMEWORK
Skilling India: Getting it right | Part II
What companies need to keep in mind to ensure that their skilling programs are effective and impactful.
According to Labour Bureau of the Government of India, 90% of the 450 million jobs in India require vocational skills. And right now only 10% of the workforce receive any kind of vocational training at all, formal or informal.[1]
Compare India
Skilling the unskilled: Why should companies get involved? | Part I
A look at how companies can align their CSR strategies to the Government
Bridging the Gap: Skilling Initiatives for a Changing Workforce
In India, the need for skilling initiatives is paramount, as they hold the key to equipping individuals with the essential skills required to thrive in a rapidly changing job landscape. This blog delves into the challenges faced by Skilling programs that hinder the program effectiveness. It also highlights Samhita-CGF’s innovative approach to tackle these obstacles, emphasising on the significance of skill development in driving individual success and broader economic development in the face of rapid change.
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India’s demographic dividend, characterised by a youthful population, could potentially be a significant driver of economic growth. However, to harness this effectively, India needs a skilled and job-ready workforce. Unfortunately, India’s current skilling ecosystem grapples with a multitude of challenges that hinder its capacity to prepare individuals for the demands of the modern job market. In this context, let’s delve into the challenges confronting India’s current skilling ecosystem and explore potential solutions to address them.
Challenges with India’s Current Skilling Ecosystem
1. Limited
Samhita
The REVIVE Alliance was set up with the mission of creating economic opportunities for vulnerable communities disproportionately impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
One of the Alliance
Sanitation Workers
There are more than five million full-time sanitation workers of which two million are directly engaged in high-risk tasks such as emptying septic tanks, maintaining sewer lines, and drains at the cost of their health, dignity, and safety. Irrespective of their contributions, they are not recognized as essential public service providers, instead are overlooked, made invisible, stigmatized, and ostracized by society at large. Moreover, the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the vulnerability of sanitation workers and their families to many challenges. They face various challenges at the workplace, such as compromised health and safety, limited or no awareness about social security schemes, and limited skills and livelihood options.
Therefore, the REVIVE Alliance aims to uplift sanitation workers by improving their overall quality of life while addressing critical socio-economic challenges faced by sanitation workers through focused interventions that cater to their immediate, medium- and long-term needs. In doing so, the project not only impacted the workers but also their family members resulting in 4x overall impact.
The project has 3 components:
Blue-Collared Workers
Given the steep hit that the garment industry took due to COVID-19 and the impact it had on the livelihood of garment workers, Arvind Foundation has partnered with Samhita-CGF and impact partner Learnet to provide financial support, re-skilling and placements to ex-Arvind workers who were laid off during the pandemic. Arvind Foundation is the CSR arm of Arvind Ltd, a global player in the textile and apparel manufacturing industry and they became an integral member of the REVIVE alliance – aiming to create a better normal.
Program Structure
Training:
- Basic job readiness training
Placement:
- Identification & mapping of jobs according to the skills and location preference of the selected candidate
- Collection of placement proofs from employers and KYC documents from candidates
Returnable Grant:
- After preliminary KYC and placement verification conducted by Learnet and CGF, the list of candidates and their documents are shared with Supermoney for verification and onboarding
- After candidates accept terms of the returnable grant through calls conducted by Supermoney, the batch is finalized by CGF
- The equivalent amount is transferred from CGF to Supermoney after a round of internal approvals
- Upon receipt of the transferred amount, the grant worth INR 4,500 is disbursed to the candidates before they receive their first salary
- After the deferment period of one month, Supermoney sends out repayment reminders and links to the candidates
- The candidate repays the grant in five instalments of INR 900 each
- Repayments are collected, reconciled and transferred back to CGF account by Supermoney
What did we learn?
Mobilization:
Learnet is a training and placement agency and they have limited connections with the local communities. There is a need for the intervention of a grassroots NGO or organization that can aid mobilization and ensure that the program serves the beneficiaries in need (people who lost jobs on account of the pandemic in this case).
Learnet, CGF and SuperMoney struggled to reach out to these communities and conduct monitoring/impact assessment after their placements and receipt of RG. The involvement of an intermediary organisation can improve accountability when it comes to repayment and will further streamline the RG related processes.
Curriculum Design:
Candidates are associated with Learnet for a short span of 4.5 hours and are mapped to a job almost immediately and have very limited connection with them. The curriculum is very basic and does not equip them with the required skill sets. Since the cohort was heterogeneous in terms of their socio-economic background, qualifications and technical skills, Learnet struggled to map the available openings to their skill sets and could not fully satisfy their requirements. There is a need to design a longer upskilling/reskilling program with a focused approach that aims to train candidates to take up job roles that are in demand (Refer reskilling note proposed to Arvind).
It is also imperative to incorporate financial and digital literacy modules into the curriculum to ensure uptake of digital tools amongst communities.
Capacity Building:
Training partners are new to hybrid programs including financial instruments like Returnable Grants. There is a need for capacity building of these training partners to improve communication and ensure a seamless flow of clean data.
Returnable Grant:
These salaried blue-collar workers earn an average salary of INR 10,000
UNDP India joins hands with Samhita-CGF’s REVIVE to restore livelihoods affected by COVID-19
This partnership will provide technical assistance such as business advisory, capacity building, digital skills, and market linkages, in addition to ensuring better and equal access to social protection systems for the informal sector workers.
Join us in REVIVING India
The most vital factor to contain the destruction created by Covid-19 is to empower the ones dispossessed and at risk. To restore the livelihoods lost during the pandemic, we have partnered with USAID, MSDF and Omidyar Network India to launch a $6.85 million blended finance facility called REVIVE.
REVIVE will provide accessible and affordable capital in the form of grants, returnable grants and loans to previously employed or self-employed workers and at-risk nano and micro enterprises to either restart and sustain their work or find alternative business opportunities.
With REVIVE we are expecting to support 100,000 workers and enterprises with a preference given to youth and women.
I’m glad to inform you that REVIVE has already received support from corporates such as Arvind Limited, Godrej Consumer Products Limited and foundation like Brihati Foundation powered by Claris.
I would like to invite you to be a part of our goal to bring people back to a road to recovery and reignite the economy.
Making Skills and Livelihoods Training Count
Companies are spreading their efforts thin, focusing on the entire value chain rather than working in their areas of strength. A collaborative approach, where companies focus on what they do the best and strike partnerships to add value and plug gaps, is the way forward.
Samhita, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and Ambuja Cement Foundation (ACF) hosted the second edition of CSR Caf
