It is important to acknowledge here that workers who have continued to work during the pandemic are doing so at great risk to their health and personal safety. Not all platform models have evolved fast enough to ensure safety for workers who continue to risk their health while at work. Both the white paper and the webinar conversations highlighted these issues of worker precarity and the need for platform models to evolve to balance both – worker and consumer safety.
The whitepaper paints the overall picture of these trends and challenges, to spotlight early solutions and efforts that organizations and stakeholders from the skilling ecosystems can undertake. The research makes a strong case for building 21st century skills – including skills for digital fluency, financial literacy, knowledge of financial management, communication and interpersonal skills, and the ability to assess information critically. Acknowledging the pace of the changing nature of work in today’s time, a major recommendation of the white paper is also for the sector to help youth become self-learners, i.e., men and women empowered with an understanding of their needs, aspirations and barriers that mark their career journeys. Both, the white paper and the webinar conversations emphasise on this need to build learnability among young people to help them navigate these challenges armed with informed decision-making skills and the ability to drive their up-skilling, re-skilling needs.
Finally, both the white paper and the webinar concluded with a call for like-minded organizations to come together as alliances, to help meet the length and breadth of India’s skilling needs. It emphasised on the distinct and important role that each sector player – from government training departments, to funders such as Cisco, research focused organizations and organizations working on the ground – can play to help make India’s youth future-ready.
The Learner 