Youth unemployment—particularly among rural youth—is a hot political issue in India, where more than 56 percent of secondary school students in India lack basic digital skills. The economy has been growing fast, but only about 30 percent of young adults can operate a computer—the figure is lower for women—and while more young people are studying beyond secondary school, many are still finishing with few marketable skills. Every year, while nearly eight million young people in India take short-term job skills training programs, those programs produce a job for only about one in three of them.
Because the demographics of development is shifting, with countries becoming more urban and rural communities depending more on remittances, some nonprofits are shifting their focus from addressing rural livelihoods to supporting urban transplants and their ties to home. For this reason, while “rural” is baked into the name of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP)—an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network—the agency has seen demand for new services, in India and elsewhere, where young people are moving to the cities for work. In addition to job skills, they look for support finding employment and the life skills around adapting to city life.
Read more at the source: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/bridging_the_divide
By David A. Taylor (writer and a communications consultant for the Aga Khan Development Network)
#Incaseyoumissedit
Read more about Yuva Junction, an AKRSP initiative here: https://the.ismaili/india/yuva-junction-akrsp-initiative and http://www.akrspindia.org.in/whtvdo_sklnEntrsp
