As one of the pioneers in the space of community based programming for young people and building on its considerable experience in India and other countries, CAP Foundation over the last nine years has developed a full-fledged accelerated skills training programme to link learning and livelihoods for young people with forward linkages to employment avenues.

Building on CAP’s well-developed and established model, this model is an inclusive youth empowerment program based in the context of emerging economy. The model targets below poverty youth with special focus on school dropouts, unemployed secondary school graduates, migrant youth and youth from resettlement communities. The model supports employment opportunity oriented workforce preparation with a strong focus on life skills and work readiness. Post training, the project connects the youth to job opportunities that allows them to earn and to access peer sharing networks. This implies involvement of business, vocational training service providers and industry professionals in developing integral components to learn, acquire skills, become employable, access jobs, earn, save and advance.

The model is primarily designed to improve the skills and employability status of some of the most vulnerable youth from rapidly urbanizing small towns and backward rural disadvantaged districts, make them competitive in the job market by providing demand-driven contemporary skills training with job placement support and enable them to aspire to assimilate into the new economy labour market. By projecting potential labour market opportunities, this program will enable the youth to make informed choice options about gaining access to skills and competencies to decent jobs. It will contribute in making the workforce development inclusive, equitable and effective for new economy jobs and institutionalize partnerships between businesses, citizens volunteers and governments. Trainees who successfully graduate from the short term certificate course and take up job placements can then continue to acquire, at their pace, additional competencies and receive diplomas and career advancement opportunities through flexible direct classes or e-learning in distance learning mode provided by the Community College platform. The most significant outcome, however is that these vulnerable youth in transition receive the necessary support to enable them to learn and acquire necessary skills to balance education-work and family life balance for self-directed growth.

The Foundation has an impressive footprint in terms of its partnership approach, face-to-face and e-learning training content and methodology, capacity building of trainers, job placement and post placement support to trainees. CAP has moved from a mere skills training service provider to an innovative end-to-end solutions provider contributing to specialized technical resource and capacity building in this sector through CAP Workforce Development Institute (CAP – WDI) established in 2010 by the Board CAP Foundation. CAP Workforce Development Institute (CAP – WDI) is an ISO 9001:2008 certified organization and has international accreditation to award Edexcel certificate. Edexcel is part of Pearson, the world’s leading learning company which has an educational heritage rooted in names like Longman, Heinemann and Prentice Hall. Edexcel is the UK’s largest awarding organisation, offering academic and vocational qualifications and testing to schools, colleges, employers and other places of learning in the UK and internationally.

CAP’s model has received considerable institutional capability building support to develop the model to its current level of maturity and adaptability through much iteration. This in turn has helped its wide spread adoption by a diverse range of players and scaling up through government and other channel partners. Through partnership with leading agencies such as USAID, European Commission, ILO, Microsoft, Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Plan International, CAP’s model has been adapted in many contexts of disadvantaged youth in many countries. Microsoft supported the adoption of the model through its “Unlimited Potential” program to support employability of disadvantaged youth, besides its Asia regional initiative for reintegration of survivors and potential victims of trafficking. ILO supported the adoption of this model by the Confederation of Indian Industry besides integrating this model in the rehabilitation program for disaster-affected communities in the Tsunami Relief program. USAID funded the application of the model in more than one context: - through “SARI-Q,” a project on re-skilling retrenched garment workers in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Another 5-year grant "Workforce Development Initiative: Preparing Youth for 21st Century Jobs” took the model through public-private partnerships to scale in India. This experience and a third project for introduction of formal education in Madrasa religious education centres for Muslim girls was included in the design for USAID's most recent "Mega Sky" program.

Various studies to gauge impact of the model’s adoption and integration in different contexts have reinforced its reliability and scalability. Over 2,50,000 youth over the past 5 years from Asia (India, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal) and Africa (Egypt, North Sudan, South Sudan and most recently Tanzania), have benefitted from the program both through the direct operations of CAP Foundation and technical services of CAP WDI. In promoting the adoption of its model, CAP’s key contribution has been providing project leadership in stakeholder development and the youth learning dimension. CAP’s program managers provide full-time on-site leadership to the program building the local team’s capacity to develop and manage partnerships for scaling up and sustainability.