Soon after the pandemic began in early 2020, a global economic crisis followed. Unemployment emerged as one of the major outcomes of the pandemic. Many industries suffered tremendously, followed by mass layoffs. The unorganised sector has undergone a huge setback as well. In this difficult situation, Smile Foundation’s STeP initiative stepped up and adapted itself to the changing economic and unemployment scenario. The goal is to skill the youth to equip them for jobs in emerging sectors.
Our Livelihood Programme: STeP
Smile Foundation’s Smile Twin E-learning Programme is a livelihood programme for the youth. It aims not just to educate deserving youth with limited opportunities but also to nurture their mental health and personality development. The programme equips them with the skills they need to make their own place in the world and earn their own livelihood.
This livelihood programme has succeeded in addressing the requirement of soft skills needed at the workplace. It also makes candidates confident through comprehensive training on personality development.
The centralised placement cell of STeP creates and sources opportunities for the students, both through on and off-campus placements. STeP ties up with brands such as Paytm, OYO Townhouse, and Café Coffee Day which require a semi-skilled workforce. Often, the course content is worked out as per the requirement of specific brands and their recruitment needs.
The programme seeks to empower underprivileged youth and also offers career counselling to help students choose the right employment in tune with their skills, abilities, and job expectations.
How We Support The Youth?
It is a known fact that a large percentage of college graduates are deemed unemployable by potential employers. It is not their lack of theoretical knowledge that causes this. Instead, it is the lack of the right skills, attitude, and proper guidance.
Smile Foundation’s STeP, through our e-learning education programme, aims at creating a pool of young and independent people from a section of underprivileged youth through skill enhancement in tandem with market requirements. It is an effort towards bridging the gap between the demand and supply of skilled manpower in the fast-emerging services and retail sectors of modern India.
With help from corporates and donors, we are able to equip our 82 centres spread across India to impart the necessary skills.
STeP before COVID
The national-level programme trains poor and underprivileged youth in English proficiency, basic computer education, and soft skills. This is aimed at enhancing their prospects of employment in the retail, hospitality, and BPO sectors.
The hospitality and retail sectors are among the worst hit due to the coronavirus pandemic. These were two of the primary focus sectors for SteP, apart from BPO. Due to the changes caused by the pandemic and the lack of opportunities in these sectors as a result of huge financial losses, we had to innovate and adapt to the situation so that we could still benefit youth and make them employable in other sectors.
Innovations in the STeP initiative since COVID
As the pandemic spread, while some industries collapsed, others came up in a big way. Smile Foundation identified three core sectors that should be the focus of STeP:
- Healthcare
- Digital Marketing
- BFSI (banking, financial services, and insurance).
Apart from these, the BPO sector and e-logistics are also emergent sectors that can be aligned with STeP.
How We Adapted
Sector-wise Developments of Smile Foundation’s STeP Initiative
Healthcare
To train young people in the healthcare sector, Smile Foundation started 45 centres in October 2020, 9 in June 2021, and 12 in July 2021. The jobs in the healthcare sector include those of home caregivers, nurses, ambulance staff, hospital staff, and so on.
Digital Marketing
Three centres have been started in Bangalore, Delhi, and Talegaon (near Pune) since November 2020 to train students in digital marketing.
BFSI
Employment opportunities have opened up in the banking, finance, and insurance sectors since the beginning of the pandemic.
Moving Forward
Smile Foundation will keep training the youth with the necessary skills for these sectors and try to get them placed as far as possible. The initiative is being scaled up as the opening up of new businesses and the expansion of the already established ones need more human power to fuel their soaring ambitions.
