Mumbai, July 15: On the occasion of World Youth Skills Day, Salaam Bombay Foundation’s skills@school program in partnership with YES Bank conducted a Financial Literacy field visit for over 200 children across 7 BMC schools. These children had the opportunity of visiting a YES BANK branch near their school and learning the basics of banking including functioning of a bank, different types of accounts, education and home loans, withdrawal and deposits, drawing up cheques and demand drafts etc. The goal of this initiative is to introduce children to basic financial concepts that will help them save and plan for a better future.
On the initiative, Ms Namita Vikas, Group President & Global Head, Climate Strategy & Responsible Banking, YES BANK, said, “YES BANK is proud to partner Salaam Bombay Foundation in providing financial literacy to students and educating them on key aspects of banking and finance. Through the Bank’s community engagement and knowledge sharing platform, YES COMMUNITY, YES BANK aims to expand the reach of financial skills and knowledge amongst the youth, helping build a more financially prudent society for the future.”
Gaurav Arora, General Manager, skills@school added, “At Salaam Bombay Foundation we believe in providing children with practical knowledge and experience of the skill learnt. To achieve this we have partnered with reputed training institutes for our children to be taken to the institute and apply what they have learnt within a realistic setting. Likewise, with Financial Literacy, while we have deployed programs in the Municipal Schools, it is important for these children to further understand the concepts learnt in the classroom within a practical setting. What better way to do this than being able to visit a YES BANK branch and learn more about financial concepts first hand.”
Started in 2013, the skills@school program’s objective is to provide children in the Municipal schools of Mumbai, Maharashtra with effective skill building and market orientation enabling them to earn a part time income to support future education; think about progressive career paths and complete their education. Each child enrolled in the program completes specific training across 9 trades like Beauty & Wellness, Home Appliance Repair, Tailoring, Mobile Repairing, Computer Hardware, Web Designing, Graphic Designing and Auto Service Technician. The program is also deploying programs of important skills including Financial Literacy and Conversational English in Municipal schools.
The skills@school program also partners with reputed training institutes and NGOs to conduct the training for students at the school premises including Kohinoor Technical Institute, LabourNet and Masoom among others.
Since inception, the skills@school program has trained approximately 1900 children, out of which more than 1000 are girls. The vision 2020 of the program is to be able to double the program’s outreach numbers from this Academic year (annually) and cumulatively reach over 15000 students by 2020. The targetoutreach number for this academic year (2017-18) is 2000 students across 40 schools and 80 batches, with Cycle 1 (July – October) having already enrolled 1063 students across 9 trades and 19 schools.
About Salaam Bombay Foundation
Salaam Bombay Foundation (SBF) began its operations in 2002; with the mission “A child in school has a future”. At the core of all of SBF’s initiatives is the commitment to empower the most vulnerable children living in Mumbai’s slums to stay in school and make the right choices for health, education and livelihood. Since its inception, SBF has reached more than 500,000 children aged 11 to 17 years in 224 public schools across Mumbai, out of which 250,000 girls have been impacted through our programs as on April 2016.
The Salaam Bombay Model consists of two main focus areas; Project Super Army and Project Résumé. Through Project Super Army, children are armed with important life skills to stay away from tobacco, while appointing them as public health change agents in their schools and communities. Through Project Résumé, SBF uses engaging learning tools such as sports, arts, media and vocational programs to prepare children with important career skills for a brighter future.
Harvard School of Public Health has studied our model[i] and found that children in Salaam Bombay’s programs have greater ambition and over 90% commit to finishing school.