Skill Vibes: Pause..Reflect..

I am writing this in continuation to my previous articles, viz; Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (1) and Skill Development:  Lessons from Afghanistan (2) in case you missed them earlier: Read on further…. Another learning from the past. The India Skills centre was approved to be setup on 28 Aug 2005 through a joint statement of the two heads of the States. The entire team was overjoyed imagining what it would be like. The team made several visits to Kabul in quick succession, essentially to establish liaison with the concerned people in the Afghanistan Government, visit the training centres set up by other countries like South Korea, Japan and Iraq, visit several construction sites to understand the live issues and skill needs. These visits gave us good perspective of what must be done and what should be avoided and why. The final go ahead from the Government was received after a detailed process of budgeting and re-budgeting and responding to queries of...

I n my previous story on the subject (Skill Development:   Lessons from Afghanistan (1), I had shared the challenge posed by the then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, which took us Kabul to select the potential trainees for a focused short term multi-skilling capsule to be delivered in New Delhi. We now move ahead from March 2005 from Kabul to May 2005, New Delhi. The 25 Afghan trainees who were selected for a short multi-skilling capsule on use of power tools for construction related job roles arrived at New Delhi on the 5 th of May. They were well received and taken to the youth hostel in central Delhi which was set up to be their home for the next 15 days.   A lot of hard work had been put in between mid-March and 4 th of May to ensure meaningful training. All elements to make the training successful were falling in place: The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan confirmed the broad trades of Carpentry, Plumbing and Electrical Wiring. The Principa...