The Indian economy faces twin dilemmas:

• Some two-thirds of urban Indian adolescents aged 15 to 18 are neither in school nor working; most of the rest are in exploitative jobs, earning less than minimum wage and working more than 12 hours a day.
• Meanwhile, there’s a shortage of qualified candidates in the service and manufacturing sectors.

In an effort to close the gap, the government has embarked on a mission to help some 500 million people gain employable skills by 2020.

To further enable these disadvantaged adolescents to escape poverty and join India’s growing middle class, we focus our investments on helping to build sustainable institutions that offer vocational training and the soft skills critical to success in new economy jobs. We also focus on fostering programs that help upper-level impoverished students in traditional schools gain practical, employable skills, and that offer guidance to help them make better career choices.