Project Code Unnati is a partnership with UNDP India (enabled by support from SAP Labs) to provide career guidance & counselling services to youth in Karnataka colleges and institutions
Last year, we partnered with UNDP to create a repository of career-based information videos and also provide one on one counselling for youth under the “Sach Honge Sapne” initiative. In yet another partnership (this one also supported by SAP Labs), Head Held High Foundation and UNDP India are now seeking to implement the Code Unnati project to ensure that youth, and particularly girls, are in a position to make informed career choices and equipped with skills to access job opportunities.
As part of this initiative, we will engage with 50 Government colleges across rural Bangalore, Dakshin Kannada and Raichur. Our plan is to provide career guidance, counselling, digital skills training and entrepreneurship development programs (EDP) to a minimum of 12,000 students from these institutions. These interventions are designed to build 21st century skills and boost their employability or readiness to explore entrepreneurship options. In addition, they will have better access to industry for jobs/internships/apprenticeships and to incubation/accelerator programs for entrepreneurship.
One of the primary objectives of the project is to support youth in choosing career paths that are aligned with their aspirations, interests, and aptitude. To enable them to more easily pursue these choices, we will connect them with services and resources (such as scholarships, skill development programs, internship and apprenticeship opportunities, e-Learning platforms, etc). This is expected to reduce the high dropout rates observed at various stages in the educational system and also boost job retention rates.
The interventions under Code Unnati are also likely to fuel interest and drive capacity building in the institutions involved for providing in-house career guidance, counselling and mentoring for their student bodies.
Throughout the project, there will be ongoing outreach to government stakeholders, including policy makers, through mentorship training programs, digital platforms, printed training materials and other collaterals.
We already have a team of career coaches (to plan and conduct workshops and other sessions), nodal officers (to coordinate the interventions in each of the colleges) and other members of the Code Unnati team ready to start implementing the program in our target institutions. With help from our partner, the Labhya Foundation, we have put together a lot of curricular and training content that will be used for the various programmatic interventions.
We are excited to take Code Unnati to students who can leverage its wealth of career resources to make the best choices for their future.
Target impact of Code Unnati
- 12,000 students to receive guidance and counselling to make more informed career choices.
- 8000 students to attend more technical sessions delivered by career coaches to build employability and new skills.
- 700 students to be linked to jobs, internships and vocational training programs.
