India has the potential to reap a huge “demographic dividend” (adding 183 million additional working-age population (15-64 years) or 22% of the global working population over the next 3 decades) thanks to its younger population compared to China, US or other major economies. However, this demographic dividend can become a demographic liability with millions of unemployed youth if they are not gainfully employed with sustainable livelihoods. A necessary component of that is training and creating a highly qualified workforce of the future to attract high-quality foreign and domestic investment and fulfilling such jobs to become the workforce for the world. Recognizing this need, the Government of India has been trying to ramp up vocational education through the setting up of National Skills Mission, National Skill Development Corporation, Skill India initiative, etc.

The SDN Trust was set up in 2013 to help in this critical mission of enabling these national skilling efforts to Scale with Quality and provide a pathway to the next-generational employment needs. The vision is to provide a platform that enables any and all training providers as well as technical or academic institutions in India, big or small, to the same highest quality resulting in better equipped workforce leading to better income and sustainability for Indians.

Since its inception, SDN trust has worked with actual Employers and national Sector Skills Councils to develop the course content to be highly relevant to industry needs. We partner with National Skills Development Corporation (NSDC) and Management, Entrepreneurship and Professional Skills Council (MEPSC) to develop English, Employability, and Entrepreneurship (EEE) courses to be deployed across their training provider network.  SDN trust supports other training partners like Smile Foundation, Magic Bus, etc. to build general employability skills to make their trainees job-ready. On the academic programs, we have partnered with States like Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, etc. to pioneer the introduction of vocational education in secondary schools. We augmented those efforts by working with Pandit Sundarlal Sharma Central Institute of Vocational Education (PSSCIVE, a division of NCERT) to create school textbooks along with corresponding eLearning lessons to deploy in these schools across trades. We also work with vocational academic institutions like TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences), Symbiosis, Shri Viswakarma Skill University, etc. to enhance their training.

With its mission aligned with the objectives of partners like Wadhwani Foundation, SDN Trust has gotten funding from them to take its efforts forward.  In addition to its digital curriculum and technology platform (to make it universally accessible), SDN enables the ecosystem partners by strong Facilitator Development programs, employer network, and connections and is planning to provide auxiliary resources like mentors, career counseling, and informational tools as well as networking across the ecosystem to enhance the career prospects of trainees. By providing this 360-degree platform free of cost to all partners, we hope to create an ever-growing ecosystem providing world-beating vocational training and opportunities to under-served Indian youth and put them on a path to family-sustaining wages, pulling them and generations to come out of poverty.