Skill Vibes: Pause..Reflect..

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...

S kill development lessons from Afghanistan…Surprised!!! Yes. Afghanistan. I will take you through a journey in a series of articles covering one of the best skill development projects ever I have been through. Since the purpose is to share the lessons, I will use the names of the organisations and people involved restrictively. It certainly was a show of detailed coordination between the Governments and various organisations and leadership, courage, innovation and never say die attitude of the team members at all levels. As of now I roll back to the year 2005. The then President of Islamic Republic of Afghanistan along with his Cabinet Ministers came to India for a series of meetings in Feb 2005. The meetings besides the Govt of India were also facilitated by the Indian High Commission at Kabul. One of the apex Industry Associations was entrusted the task of making a presentation to the Afghan President and his team of Ministers on skilling the human resource for re-constructi...