The support of Dell Technologies for the pilot project called Project Kaushal in the year 2021-2022 enabled Navjyoti India Foundation to provide transformative, personal and skill-based education to bridge the digital divide and enhance employability.

The program was run to address the technology training needs of deserving and marginalized communities at three levels namely

1. Offering early orientation of futuristic courses like coding, robotics, artificial intelligence, smart processes etc. to adolescent children in schools
2. Mapping extremely marginalized geographical locations with little digital exposure and provide digital literacy training to community people
3. Running advanced level employability-oriented IT courses to the youth.

Thus, the organization could adopt a multipronged approach to address more than 7000 beneficiaries with need-based IT training programs. The project worked closely on ensuring relevant backward linkages with likeminded organizations and institutes to mobilize the deserving target beneficiaries while placing equal emphasis on developing forward linkages for placement at corporates for skill training programs. The training programs for all the three target groups remained comprehensive to cover technical aspects, life skills and employability skills and social orientation skills. This was achieved through engaging subject experts and content partners like NIIT Foundation, WhiteHatJr., Dcode AI etc. industry experts to conduct master classes, career counselling seminars, placement readiness sessions and workshops.

Major achievements of the project included:

1. Five children with exceptional aptitude provided with scholarship from Whitehat Jr. to pursue next level of coding course.
2. Mentoring plan for 200 children with exceptional aptitude made for implementation in second phase of the project as part of Project Kaushal 2.0

Project Kaushal 2.0

With the encouraging response received in the first year of the project and looking at the need to further address the digital divide and strengthen the ICT skills, the project in the year 2022-2023 aims to reach out to 7500 beneficiaries in Delhi NCR with the following interventions:

1. Digital unify and inclusion program for 3000 children:  The digital Unify and inclusion program for children will specifically work to address technology training needs of children in remote schools and help them integrate STEM based teaching learning in alignment with the vision of the National Education Policy 2020. Thus, setting up of IT labs and training in STEM courses like coding, robotics, artificial intelligence etc. would be undertaken. Efforts would be directed to mentor government/low end private schools and NGO/Children’s Homes to integrate these courses in their school curriculum itself.
2. Employment oriented skill training program for 2000 youth: Skill training for the youth to enhance employability and self-reliance will be provided through courses like digital marketing, data entry, Tally, BPO, Retail Management, IT advance etc. Additionally, need based master classes, boot camps, expert sessions, entrepreneurship training, placement readiness sessions and career counselling will be integrated in the courses to make them holistic and comprehensive. These courses will be divided into skilling, upskilling and reskilling modules to meet the specific needs of different target beneficiaries.
3. E-Saksharta campaign for ensuring access to digital literacy for 2500 community people in remote areas: For the community people located in remote areas with little access to IT training, 20-hour digital literacy course will be offered as part of the E-Saksharta campaign. The effort would be to ensure that the area/locality or the village gets digitally literate in the specified duration. The digital training lab would then be moved to another location if needed.  

In all the three components of the projects, digital training labs will be set up in partner organizations to facilitate smooth delivery of the courses.

Glimpse from Project Kaushal 1.0