Consultation workshop on Enhancing Employability of Youth - Role of Civil Society Organizations.

Context

As we are aware that economic reforms may have given a boost to industrial productivity and brought in foreign investment in capital intensive areas but the boom has not yet created drastic changes in creating jobs specially in the rural areas. The basic reason being unemployability of mass due to lack of skill. India's labour force is growing at a rate of 2.5 per cent annually, but employment is growing at only 2.3 per cent. Thus, the country is faced with the challenge of not only absorbing new entrants to the job market (estimated at seven million people every year), but also clearing the backlog.  

In this context it is inevitable to focus on skill based training programs especially for youths that would enable them self-employed and improve their livelihood condition through improved scope of employability in different sectors. Therefore, FVTRS (Functional Vocational Training and Research Society) and (SSK) Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra decided to address the enduring issue through organizing a workshop to sensitize the civil society organizations on this pertinent issue of skill based/enhancement training for destitute and deprived section of the society.

Introduction

A consultation workshop was jointly organized by Functional Vocational Training and Research society (FVTRS), Bangalore and Sahbhagi Shikshan Kendra (SSK), Lucknow on enhancing employability of youth-role of civil society to sensitize civil society organizations on the subject of detrimental condition of unorganized sector and to motivate NGOs, VOs to address the enduring issues through focus on skill building programs for youths, in the SSK premise at Lucknow on 17th March 2008.

There were sixty three participants representing different organizations with Dr. Basak the board member of FVTRS as a resources person, Mr. Albert Joseph the director of FVTRS and Mr. Ashok Sigh the director of SSK on dais.

Content and flow of discussion

The workshop started with the welcome note by Mr. Sanjay Kr. Singh (SSK) which was followed by giving a brief background, design, subject matter and expected outcome of workshop by the director of SSK in which he cited few examples of migration and what generally happens with the migrant person at the new place and their family at home; attack of Maharastrians on the unemployed youth of U.P and Bihar who went on to search employment and further he emphatically urged to make  our country as " agriculture based economy/country to employment based economy/country" looking at the need of the hour. Mr. Ashok Singh also gave the direction as to what could be the possible role of civil society in coming through this ordeal in the form skill enhancement training, orientation of youths etc. Mr. Albert Joseph in his deliberation cited few data related to population, youth, skilled and unskilled people in terms of percentage and correlated with the past development initiative and raised questions on skill development sensitivity of the government and the people at large which were quite an eye opening and wooed the interest and concern of participants on the subject. He also gave a brief account of FVTRS and its initiative on the subject of such a grave concern. Further, he advocate taking advantage of human potential and a huge labour force available in the country by skill enhancement of youths. Dr. P. Basak in his elaborate and intricate presentation on serving the unorganized/informal sector presented a coherent picture of unorganized sector in India. The whole presentation was divided in five parts as Indian work force their no. and characteristics, workforce in unorganized sector, pictorial view of the workers in unorganized sector, contribution of workers in the unorganized sector in Indian economy and how the workers in the unorganized sector can be helped out. The presentation helped participants develop an insight of unorganized sector; gauge the level of destitution and finally the possible ways and means to overcome the problems through different short of skill enhancement. In the order of presentation many participants also shared their own experiences and asked many questions to clarify the content that were duly answered by Dr. Basak.

Open house discussion

In the second half of the workshop the whole issue was being discussed in the local context in which representatives from GDS, Pani Sanstha, Nav bharat Kalayan Samittee came up with their view on migrants labour as- ek bahar se aaya riksa wala ne kaha " riksa hi mera ghar, odhna aur bichauna hai; Politechnic chaurahe par char log pul tutne se mar gaye marne walon ka kuch pata thikana nahi mila kyonki wo bahar se aaye the " and different other experiences. Moreover, they vouch for their endeavor to solve the problems especially in U.P. Their expression and deliberation were fair enough to indicate the success of workshop in terms of sensitizing the representatives of civil society organizations towards the issues. Mr. Vishal Ranjan (FVTRS) in his eloquent presentation described the process, guidelines and expectation from project proposals to be submitted before FVTRS. He emphasize on the clear understating of the subject, input, output and strategy to achieve its objective in the part of NGO for a particular project and its congruence with the FVTRS mission. In his vivid presentation he also beamed on the recent shift in FVTRS strategy for a project proposal. During the question answer session which was faced by the member on the dais Mr. Albert Joseph, Mr. Ashok Singh and Mr. Vishal Ranjan the participants were earnestly putting request for the proposals to be accepted in Hindi as it would be convenient for many grassroot level NGO that, though , they work with more vigor in the field but feel more comfortable with Hindi in their expression and have less professional resource, which was politely refused by the desk for many technical and reporting complexities.

Valedictory

At the end of the workshop vote of thanks were extended on behalf of SSK by Mr. Ashok Singh the director, and Mr. Albert Joseph the director on behalf of FVTRS. An FVTRS memento was also presented to Mr. Ashok Singh by the Dr. Basak and in turn Mr. Ashok Singh presented the memento to Dr. Basak on behalf of FVTRS.

Team