On the education side while most other colleges and schools look to admit students who are meritorious, Vedanta College through are Shiksha & Rojgaar initiatives are more focussed on those students who do NOT get admissions anywhere else. And we do this consciously. Our intent is to help the youth from the marginalised sections of society who do not have the money or means and/or time to opt for formal education. Because of this they either perform poorly making their vertical progression in the formal education stream difficult or they simply drop out. They then get lost to society, sometimes even getting involved in petty crime. Our aim has always been to try bringing them back into mainstream making all out efforts to reach out to them and
EITHER
admit them into our schools and colleges and then ensure over the period they are with us to bring them at par with other more privileged children.
OR
provide them with job/self-employment-oriented skill courses making them employment ready.
Keeping this in mind we through our Shiksha initiative ensure that we provide to our students infrastructure which is at par with the best of private school institutions but at Govt college/school rates. We also ensure that our infrastructure is used from morning to late evening so as to cater to the maximum number of youths belonging to the above segments of the community. This is our unique concept of a community college which has not been tried anywhere else in the country but is extremely relevant in the Indian context where the access to good quality education/skilling is extremely limited for the weaker sections of society.
Similarly, our Rojgaar programme is not run free like many other Govt programmes/CSR initiatives by Corporate because such programmes invariably are non-serious engagements and only help the training partner ecosystem-there is little at stake at the end of the day to ensure such students get employment. We instead run a programme which takes the student through a job-oriented skill course after they pay only a token sum of money. We get skill loans sanctioned for them through an NBFC to pay for the course but the liability for this triggers only after s/he gets a job to his or her satisfaction. The entire cost of training till then is borne by the Foundation; hence this model necessarily has to be outcome driven (outcome being a job for the trainee to his/her satisfaction) to be sustainable as or else the entire loss is of the Foundation’s. Since this is an extremely difficult model to run, no other Trust/corporate is putting their skin in the game the way Vedanta Foundation is doing. This is because our belief is a well-designed placement oriented will definitely have takers. This perhaps is potentially the first self-sustainable model of skill development in India.
And again, like the colleges, Rojgaar skill centres also run from morning to evening trying to cater to all livelihood-oriented requirements of the community.
Vedanta Foundation therefore is more about building these unique institutions for the community & running programmes for their benefit than about the impressive institutional buildings we see all around.
