Handholding homemakers to be financially independent

THE second wave of Covid-19 pandemic has taken away the lives of many breadwinners in the country, throwing their family members deep into severe financial crisis. Many housewives, who have lost their husbands, are now looking for employment opportunities but unable to get a job due to lack of skills. Dr Reddy's Foundation (DRF) has become a new ray of for such women in the city.

The not-for-profit organisation is offering handholding support to homemakers to be financially independent. Almost 60 per cent of the aspirants who have completed a one-month online training programme successfully achieved jobs in sectors like BPO, retail and hospitality. This is the first batch of a pilot project in association with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC).

DRF has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the NSDC in December 2020, to be a knowledge partner developing 'core employability skills' training programme for women who are in the age a group of 35-45, and in need of a job. This online training programme is currently under pilot phase in two cities – Hyderabad and Kochi.

After completing the pilot phase, it will be sharing a document capturing all the learnings of the programme for ecosystem sharing with the NSDC by end of this year, including its operating model. Later, the NSDC may execute the same programme across all cities in the country through project implementing agencies. This programme is focusing on increasing women workforce participation.

Women Labour Force Participation Rate has declined 20 percentage points between 2005 to 2018 and pandemic has further aggravated it, says Pranav Kumar Choudhary, Director - Operations at DRF. "There are multiple barriers that inhibit women's participation in the work force. Out of them, 'responsibility of household care' is an important one."

"We are testing a key hypothesis here that for women, whose children have grown up considerably and if we give them market aligned skills, can join the workforce. As most of the skill Development programmes cater to 18-30 age group, we wanted to focus on 35-45 age group. This is difficult pilot as employers have to also show flexibility in allowing this age-group women in jobs," he adds. As most skill development programmes in the country follow a classroom-teaching model, many faced huge infrastructure and human resource-related challenges while moving their operating models online overnight. On the one hand, participants from low-income families didn't have access to digital infrastructure, on the other trainers were not equipped enough to deliver virtual training.

Every year DRF impacts more than 25,000 unemployed youth from low income families. So far, it has impacted more than 4 lakh youth through its flagship skilling programmes with the support of its long term partners. It is also one of the very few organisations that have dedicated placement linked skill development programmes for persons with disability.

Choudhary says, "Using digital technology and diversifying our funding portfolio, we are investing in a 'Training of Trainers' course, which has helped us survive the pandemic crisis. In June 2020 survey with the participants who were attending virtually-delivered training, we found that 40 per cent were comfortable attending the programme online despite being given the option of in-person training."