Partnerships – The Learner

Building STEM Mindsets For The Future

While new technologies increasingly change the landscape of work and learning, new skills like creativity, problem solving, critical thinking and digital fluency become vital. The future of work is anchored by technology, and yet, women continue to lag behind men with regard to their access to technology, the skills to use it, and their employment in tech or related industries.

STEM in traditional terms is defined as Science, Technology, Engineering, Math — a group of subjects taught in silos in our existing school system. There is a need to move beyond this siloed approach and look at STEM as a mindset important to build 21st century skills and prepare young people for the future.

Preparing Today’s Youth for Tomorrow’s World of Work

‘A future of skilling strategy should look beyond the technical skills required for specific job profiles, and instead, seek to cultivate a set of core skills that can help chart meaningful and sustainable careers.’

This – and more – was articulated and shared in an article originally published by FVTRS on their souvenir for National Skill Conference 2019.

What we’ve seen at the workplace in the last decade is a confluence of technological advancements — one that has negated some jobs, albeit creating new ones. This accelerated pace of innovation has provoked some into thinking deeply about the possibilities that lie ahead — an important development given that most jobs of tomorrow will demand entirely new skill sets.

This begs the question: how can one upskill oneself for an uncertain future?

Having established the fact that the future of work is largely ambiguous — compounded by an ever-changing technological landscape that will continue to redefine future opportunities — identifying skills that will help offset some of the challenges that such a transition brings with it will be a good place to start.

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Three keys to building a learning organization

Through learning we re-create ourselves, thereby extending our capacity to create. This, then, is the basic meaning of a ‘learning organisation – a body that is continually expanding its ability to create its future.

While it may seem like stating the obvious, the concept of a ‘learning organization’ is not comprehended correctly by most establishments. Learning – in contemporary usage – has come to be synonymous with ‘taking in information’. Yet, that is only distantly related to real learning.

Organizations claim to care deeply about learning, but their understanding is purely technical – be it scholarly learning or industrial expertise. But learning is different from knowledge. It is deeply connected to the vision one builds for oneself and before exploring the lesser-explored aspects of it, it would be wise to understand what it broadly means in this day’s context.

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How Quest Alliance is playing the role of an ecosystem builder with Q2L

“We need to ask ourselves – are we really putting our heads together as a community to work on a problem? Or are we doing it in our own spaces?”

As the city cools off amidst a string of showers, so does the fervour that characterised this year’s Quest2Learn Summit. Weeks of relentless work had culminated in a two-day conference, inadvertently setting the standard for discourse around the future of work and learning.

In a freewheeling chat at the Bangalore International Centre, Aakash Sethi – CEO of Quest Alliance – sinks into a chair, ready to organize his thoughts and reflect on the days that passed by and what it means for the ecosystem. Excerpts:

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Lessons learnt in government relations

“Engaging with the movers and shakers of the sector varies depending on the geography and, more importantly, on the political hierarchy one is dealing with.”

It is unfortunate that the words ‘government’ and ‘relations’ taken in conjunction commonly inspire perceptions of inaccessibility and hopelessness. Navigating this diplomatic tightrope may be a skill perfected by a blend of tact and credibility, but real-time experience goes a long way too.

While ivory-towered optimism is always eclipsed by the realities on ground, I don’t think starting off with that attitude is necessarily a bad thing, as long as expectations driven by that passion is managed well. I speak from personal experience when I offer this caveat, because for all the policies that are in place to ensure good practises, the execution phase can be very challenging.

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Coalition Building & Corporate Philanthropy

Funder and nonprofit perspectives come together to tackle an issue at the heart of the development sector. What needs to be done to amplify the impact of CSR funds?

Over the past decade, I have watched the admirable, at times controversial, but ceaseless march of corporations and philanthropic foundations to ‘do good’ in India, and to do it well. It’s been accelerated by changes to the Indian Companies Act, which mandated that 2% of the average profits of a company be invested in CSR.

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