The philosophy of CAP is based on the following three convictions
All these three principals have led to the expansion of CAP from a small Rs. 60 lakh organization with 20 staff members in 2005 to Rs. 37 crore organization with over 450 staff members by 2018 – a growth that stands testimony to the mission of CAP in linking learning and livelihood. CAP started its journey of providing occupational pathways to disadvantaged youth in 2005 with one corporate partner PepsiCo, One government partner in Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation and one International donor organisation Plan International and since then there is no looking back.
Addressing the livelihood issues of these youth, with supporting transition pathways that help them move out of poverty and towards secure futures remains at the centre of the Basic Employability Skills Training program (BEST) of CAP Foundation. 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 19 years has developed a full-fledged accelerated skills training programme to link learning and livelihoods for young people with forward linkages to regular employment with decent wage avenues, savings and entrepreneurship.
The intervention targets below poverty youth with special focus on school dropouts, unemployed secondary school graduates, migrant youth and youth from resettlement communities. The program 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.
This is a new-economy livelihood promotion training program which is exclusively designed for the school dropouts/ unemployed secondary school graduates/ trafficked victims/ street youth/ retrenched workers/ migrant youth/ resettlement community members from the poorest 15% of the Indian population. The program supports both employment opportunity oriented workforce preparation as well as tiny and micro-enterprise development that is specifically and clearly oriented to identified labour market requirements and opportunities. It bridges the emerging demands in the new economy with changes that need to happen in the educational pipeline for workforce preparation in the country. This implies involvement of business and industry professionals in developing integral components to education reform including contextual employability competencies; work based learning, career academies, acquiring workplace skills and advancement of employability competencies.
CAP’s Employability Training model’s uniqueness is the combination of the following aspects incorporated in the module Linking Learning & Livelihood including:- an access barrier free aspiration learning model specific to vulnerable youth-age, location & category, market oriented competency based Employability skill development, a model feeder line for higher education, active and continuous participation of corporates at every stage, institutionalized process tools.
One of the essential components of CAP’s program is that it recognizes the gap between the growing sectors of the economy, where labour is demanded, and the type of labour available, and tries to bridge that gap. The aspirational learning model specific to vulnerable youth has been demonstrated across a variety of age groups, locations and categories.
The CAP’s demonstrated footprint has clearly vindicated its model as positioned at the right time right place for right target group in transition economy.
The program defined ‘vulnerable youth’ as out-of-school individuals and high school graduates who are between 15 and 24 years of age, who have no further opportunities for study, who are jobless or underemployed. They lack income-earning skills and training and are therefore considered vulnerable to poverty and exploitation. Such youth may be rural school dropouts, migrants, who are most likely also school dropouts or illiterate youth from the villages or displaced persons; youth having school degrees and vocational training but who are still unemployed due to the poor educational quality and non-relevant curricula of these institutes; victims of violence or disasters, trafficked victims or those (particularly females) vulnerable to trafficking and slum dwellers, who are most likely also school dropouts.
CAP worked in tandem with corporate houses, which are the emerging sources of employment, using them for placement as also for business mentoring. The entire process from market scanning to placement was done with the cooperation and sometimes the guidance of these corporate houses under the Business Mentoring Network. The students who were placed with these corporates became the brand ambassador of CAP. They facilitated easy contact between CAP and the corporate on the one hand, and between CAP and the community on the other. For both the employer corporate and the community, the student who received placement became a symbol of capacity for training unemployed youth to make them market-capable; and to provide efficient and committed staff to the corporate world.
