Guest Author
By Alex Counts
India Giving Day—a three-year-old tradition to grow the amount, impact, and joyfulness of American philanthropy to India while also deepening the ties between the world’s two largest democracies—connects donors with leading nonprofits that are successfully tackling some of the most crucial social and ecological issues facing India. Many of those organizations have developed creative ways of working collaboratively with governmental institutions, particularly at the state and district levels. Collectively, over the last few decades they have had a massive positive impact on Indian society, which has experienced one of the most dramatic reductions in poverty in human history.
An issue that stands out as one of the most important for India’s future is vocational training, also known as skilling. Today, India faces the prospect of enjoying a major demographic advantage (or “dividend”) in the next 20 years, wherein its large and growing population of working-age people can fuel economic growth for the nation and around the world. In the 1960s, countries such as Korea, Japan, and Singapore successfully leveraged their youth bulges to become prosperous societies.
On the other hand, if insufficient efforts are made to develop the skills of all these young people, it is possible that this positive scenario could morph into what some call a “demographic disaster.” If so, India might struggle mightily to provide employment for millions of youths, whose lack of productivity weighs down economic growth and social cohesion.
The Arab World and much of Latin America experienced this unpleasant phase after they had their own youth boom in recent decades.
While many indicators point to a demographic dividend for India, it is important to acknowledge and confront the reality that around 30% of Indian youth aged 15-29 are not involved in any form of education, employment, or training (NEET), well above the global average. This is particularly acute among young women. With India adding more than 13 million young people to its working age population every year, this issue takes on increasing urgency.
Fortunately, leading nonprofits are rising to the challenge of addressing this issue and helping to ensure that India realizes its demographic dividend through a wide variety of effective skilling programs.
For example, ATREE, one of the leading environment think-and-do tanks in India (and the world) has developed effective means of training individuals and communities to preserve and earn sustainable livelihoods from endangered forests as an alternative to evicting them from these critical ecosystems. In effect, they have helped the effective and humane implementation of India’s landmark National Forest Policy of 1988 and the Forest Rights Act of 2006.
Drishtee’s Swavalamban program, which was launched in 2017, connects rural and urban communities in a relationship of shared prosperity through a community-led integrated village development initiative. The model reached 450,000 families in five regions through uplifting marginal rural women by imparting critical livelihood skills.
The Seghal Foundation has focused on improving the skills of farmers so that they can be more productive, earn more, and be better stewards of the environment. Their cutting-edge agriculture program has completed more than 81,000 crop demonstrations and conducted more than 7,000 farmer trainings.
The American India Foundation has a two-pronged approach to skills development. Their Market-Aligned Skills Training (MAST) program assesses the needs for various skills in the economy and then imparts the precise training required to ensure employability.
They have established 265 skills development centers that have trained more than 1.1 million youth, especially young women in nontraditional areas such as automotive repair. In addition, their Ability–Based Livelihood Empowerment (ABLE) program has focused on enhancing the employability of people with disabilities (PwD) and ensuring that they get sustainable jobs. To date, AIF has trained more than 18,000 PwDs and secured employment for close to 12,000 of them.
In addition, HelpAge India has been working on the other end of the demographic spectrum to improve the skills of older adults so that they can find employment or create their own jobs through running microenterprises. Their Elder Self-Help Group model was initially launched in 2004 in response to the tsunami and has since led to the formation of more than 75,000 of these local support groups. More than 75% of those SHGs now function independently.
The groups receive training and support on social inclusion, financial Inclusion, health inclusion, accessing rights and entitlements, and digital inclusion. The model promotes solidarity among the elderly, helping them to fight discrimination, boredom, neglect, and abuse with the organization’s unique ‘Elders for Elders’ philosophy. Importantly, it has been adopted by the National Rural Livelihoods Mission under the Ministry of Rural Development and by the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment.
With so much at stake, supporting programs like these on India Giving Day (March 14, 2025) or during the early giving period that begins on March 1 takes on added meaning.
Youth have a particularly important role to play in attracting new donors to organizations working at the forefront of vocational training through IGD’s peer-to-peer fundraising program.
People around the country are being encouraged and supported to host events of all sizes and types to celebrate India Giving Day in order to make it memorable, meaningful and fun.
Alex Counts is the Executive Director of the India Philanthropy Alliance, the author of four books and an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. Contact: [email protected]
