Programme to skill over 75,000 young people and women in the next 5 years
HSBC India today announced the launch of HSBC Skills for Life, a skill development programme that aims to provide young people and women with requisite skillsets to enable them to earn a sustainable livelihood. HSBC, has committed a sum of INR100 crore towards this programme, spread over the next five years.
India is poised to become the world’s youngest country by 2020, with an average age of 29 years. Skill development will play a siginificant role in ensuring sustainable development and will also serve as a powerful instrument to reduce poverty and inequality.
Providing young people from disadvantaged backgrounds access to education and livelihood, is a central focus of HSBC’s community initiatives.
With HSBC Skills for Life, the bank strengthens its commitment towards skill development in India through this flagship programme that will support non-profit organisations in the following three focus areas.
Employment linked skills development of disadvantaged young people – HSBC will work with non-profit organisations on enterprise and employment linked training wherein young people will be taught skills that can help them earn a sustainable livelihood. The programme will map demand with industry requirements and link skill building with relevant jobs. It will also develop an entrepreneurial ecosystem through collaborations with organisations working in this space.
Upskilling of educators and teachers – The programme will focus on enhancing the skills of educators and teachers and will support different scalable models that include Train the Trainers’(TOT) approach, digitisation of content, curriculum translation into different languages etc. to scale learning and multiply impact.
Women’s empowerment through livelihood enhancement – The key focus on this vertical will be to enhance the capacities and improving the livelihood potential of rural and urban disadvantaged women through financial literacy and building entrepreneurial capabilities.
The first vertical will be launched in 2015 in partnership with Swades Foundation while the other two verticals will be initiated from 2016 onwards in partnership with other NGOs.
The programme will also facilitate exchange of learning, innovation and best practices and engage various stakeholders to broaden the ambit of discourse around skills and align it with the government’s vision of Skill India.
Stuart P Milne, Group General Manager and Chief Executive Officer, HSBC India, said: “HSBC believes that financial institutions have a role to play in building the capacity of disadvantaged young people and women, and enabling them to contribute to the economic prosperity of their local communities. HSBC Skills for Life is a flagship initiative of the Group in India that will support the ambitions of these young people and women, and provide relevant skills towards creating livelihood opportunities and making them employable.”
HSBC and Sustainability
HSBC’s corporate sustainability strategy includes the development of sustainable business opportunities, management of its own environmental footprint, and its community investments. The bank has a long term commitment to the communities in which it operates. Our financial inclusion initiatives support education of children from underprivileged communities, life skills training for disadvantaged young people and financial literacy and entrepreneurship capacity building for rural women in marginalised communities. HSBC’s environmental initiatives support water harvesting, habitat and biodiversity conservation, sustainable livelihoods, water and climate change awareness.
At HSBC, employee volunteering is a core component of our commitment to supporting the communities and also provides our employees with the opportunity to experience and learn about the issues that matter in their community and to apply this new knowledge and experience at work.
For more information on HSBC’s sustainability initiatives in India, please visit www.hsbc.co.in.
About HSBC India
The Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation Limited in India offers a full range of banking and financial services through 50 branches and 140 ATMs across 29 cities.
HSBC is one of India’s leading financial services groups, with over 32,000 employees in its banking, investment banking and capital markets, asset management, insurance, software development and global resourcing operations in the country. It is a leading custodian in India. Nearly 6% of India’s trade passes through HSBC. The Bank is at the forefront in arranging deals for Indian companies investing overseas and foreign investments into the country.