MTA does a large chunk of its student sourcing from rural areas. It has been a direction of choice for us and strategically fits in with our long term growth plans. Our ability to scale and provide large numbers of trained microfinance staff, critically depends on tapping into large pools of educated but unemployed youth. While this direction has been fairly successful, we are facing our fair share of challenges.
So when Knowledge @ Wharton came out with an article outlining some success stories in this area, it was a delightful reading for all of us at MTA. In this well written piece, EGMM of Andhra Pradesh, who we know as doing some fantastic work in this space have been profiled.
Some interesting excerpts from this article :-
- There are 122 million 20-to-25 year olds in India. Of these, 70 million are from the rural poor.
- In a country with a billion-plus population, an estimated 88.5 million people between the ages of 15 and 29 need to be trained. But only a very small fraction receives vocational training, according to Narendra Jadhav, a member of the government’s Planning Commission.
- Only 11% of those between 17 and 23 years old enroll in higher education.
- TeamLease, a staffing company in Bangalore, says 58% of India’s youth are not prepared for work or suffer from some kind of skill deprivation.
- And while around 14 million people enter the workforce every year, only 7% work in the organized sector.
A link to the article is below
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4408#
