(Students arrive for skill development programs at the Yuva Junction center in Narmada, Gujarat. Photo by Mansi Midha)
Youth unemployment—particularly among rural youth—is a hot political issue in India, where more than 56 percent of secondary school students in India lack basic digital skills. The economy has been growing fast, but only about 30 percent of young adults can operate a computer—the figure is lower for women—and while more young people are studying beyond secondary school, many are still finishing with few marketable skills. Every year, while nearly eight million young people in India take short-term job skills training programs, those programs produce a job for only about one in three of them.
Because the demographics of development is shifting, with countries becoming more urban and rural communities depending more on remittances, some nonprofits are shifting their focus from addressing rural livelihoods to supporting urban transplants and their ties to home. For this reason, while "rural" is baked into the name of the Aga Khan Rural Support Programme (AKRSP)—an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network—the agency has seen demand for new services, in India and elsewhere, where young people are moving to the cities for work. In addition to job skills, they look for support finding employment and the life skills around adapting to city life.
Apoorva Oza, the head of AKRSP in India, has worked with the agency since the 1980s, but he described how, on a commuter bus ride in 2006, he was struck by the tide of the young people among his fellow passengers, and their different needs:
“They would all be eager and enthusiastic, going with their folders and you could see they were applying for jobs [in cities like Vadodara, Ahmedabad, and Surat]. And the same kids you would meet in villages, the children of farmers we were working with, and they would be very disappointed.”
When Oza asked about their situation, they said: “We’re always a step behind. First, they told us if you want a job, you need to get a degree. So we invested money, we studied, and we got these degrees. We go with these degree certificates but then they say, ‘Your degree is not enough. If you don’t know computers then you’re not employable.’”
That exchange spurred the start of the training program, called Yuva Junction ("yuva" means "youth" in Hindi) which has provided computer and job skills—and life skills training—for more than 37,000 young people over the last 10 years. The program leverages AKRSP’s experience and reputation for providing rural services with new partnerships that help young people transition to lives in the city. Over time, this has informed a shift in the agency’s programming: At first jobs training for youth represented about 10 percent of its work with rural communities, but now that portion of the pie has tripled.
Bridging the Divide
Mira Vasava was about 20 years old, jobless, and living with her parents in rural Gujarat when she learned about Youth Junction. Her family belongs to India’s semi-nomadic “scheduled tribes,” among the country’s most marginalized groups (and formerly considered untouchable). With no connections and no high school education, Mira had few job prospects. Her parents farm four acres, mostly planted to cotton. “I had skills in stitching but I really wanted to explore computer skills. I knew digital was going to be very important,” she said.
Mira’s family heard that Youth Junction’s training program had a solid track record and found placements for two-thirds of its graduates. Also, the Aga Khan Rural Support Program had a good reputation. With no money to spare, they managed to pay her tuition of 1,600 Rupees (about US$22).
Every day she made the half-hour trip to the training center. About 40 percent of Youth Junction students are young women and Mira’s friend Mittal also took the course. She had never used a computer. “I was hesitant,” Mittal said. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to learn. But my friends encouraged me.” With the course, she got comfortable on the computer. The best part of the program, many students say, is the life skills classes. “They taught me how to interact with customers and other useful skills,” she said.
Their instructors had been in their students’ shoes, having come from small villages and struggled themselves to find their place in the workforce. One instructor at Dediapada named Kusum Vasava (a last name common in their area) had experienced herself a first job away and its broken promises in delayed payment and shifting conditions. That experience convinced her of the value of Youth Junction-style training and support and informs her approach to teaching life skills. Kusum took interest in Mira’s growth and her goal of getting a job in the city.
Beyond Training to Job Placement
Last year after finishing the course, Kusum helped Mira look for a job and land one with a pizza company. She also helped Mira and two other young course graduates find lodging in the city. Since 2014, AKRSP has added to the courses with employment skills and job placement support. Of more than 7,700 trainees who have received those courses, 62 percent got jobs, according to AKRSP.
Mira’s parents supported her decision to take the pizza company job in the city. Her mother tried to reassure her in almost daily phone calls during the transition to city life. “At first I called my parents and said, ‘I don’t like this.’ But Kusum told me, ‘You should stay. You just haven’t adjusted yet. Just stay for two months and see how you feel then.’”
That advice helped Mira get through the first hard months. Her salary allowed her to save and buy a scooter that her brother uses for work in the village.
Addressing Rural Problems With Urban Jobs
Instead of a wrenching divide between rural youths and their parents, Mira’s experience with Youth Junction helped her and her family strengthen their ability to face the future together. When Mira comes home to visit—after stopping first at the Youth Junction office to say hello—her city job is making a difference: She hands over half her salary to her parents, spends a bit less than a third on herself, and stashes the rest in savings, she said. The share that goes to her parents is helping pay for a new irrigation pump. That in turn helps to keep the family farm going, and ensures rural employment.
According to Vivek Singh, who manages Youth Junction for AKRSP, the average starting salary for 2019 graduates ranged from 96,000 to 120,000 Rupees, three times the average household income from farming. Singh said the program has economic growth effects for rural Gujarat through these kinds of family ties. While often not measured in economic data, remittances to families—and children’s intentions to maintain ties to their rural roots—form an important way forward for those families.
Social Change and Life Skills
Mira’s confidence and independence are also making a difference socially. With her job, Mira’s parents are less concerned about getting her married. Her father asks about wedding plans, she replies, “No, let me work and settle down first.” That’s fine, he said. “I understand. I’m supportive.”
Other young people in the village have also taken notice of her new status. “Every time I come back, other girls from the neighborhood ask me, ‘How is city life? Can we come?’”
Besides retail, the program has also placed graduates in customer support roles and in warehouse fulfillment positions, for example for online grocery services. The grocery service’s HR manager said they have hired 20 Yuva Junction trainees in the past two years. One of them, Ragesh Vasava, was recently named employee of the month. He’s saving to build a house back in the village.
In addressing life skills for adapting to the new environment, the program takes a wider view of adapting to the city. For young women, Youth Junction helps to arrange lodging, sometimes in a group apartment or house, like in Mira’s case. The program tracked employment retention and found about half of graduates still working the same jobs after one year, according to Singh.
AKRSP is expanding the range of jobs for placing graduates. They are working with corporate sponsors to improve tech opportunities near the rural training centers. “In partnership with Microsoft India, we started one rural digital skills center in the village of Gadu,” in coastal Gujarat, said Singh.
Other NGOs echo these lessons of specialized training and placement support. “We cannot expect existing urban-based job skill training and placement programs to work for rural youth without adding investments [that address rural youths’ specific needs],” said Sia Nowrojee, the director of 3D Program, a U.N. Foundation program for girls and women that has partnered with local nonprofits to support rural youth in Maharashtra. Such investments can yield returns by unlocking the young people’s aspirations and energies.
By strengthening trainees’ skills for city living, Youth Junction trainers like Kusum Vasava find purpose in their work that they don’t see in traditional teaching roles at schools or colleges. She said, “Now when I look at teachers in those places, I think it’s better for me to be here. There are so many people in the program I’ve supported with confidence to make sure they take up jobs. Many of them are now working.”
The timing of Youth Junction’s shift has been good for AKRSP as well as for its rural constituents. That lesson fits with Mira’s father’s advice on farming. “There’s no big challenge to it,” he said. “The thing with farming is, you have to keep up with timing.”
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Read more stories by David A. Taylor.