Are all equal when it comes to handling the ‘economic empowerment of desperately poor and marginalized people’ in India? Who could tell? One thing to do is to put the question to Anudip Foundation. On that, we know that they are among the very best.
In 2007, with one ethnographic study at hand, a group of social entrepreneurs set on a journey to address the critical livelihood needs of people in rural and urban areas through information technology. Based in Kolkata, a strong IT capital city of India, they had plenty of digital knowledge and felt they were strong enough to face the challenge. They have had to reassess their own capabilities and skills to make it through. Creating a set learning and skilling process for the vulnerable was to be full of the unexpected. One such example was that over time their own alumni proved to be among the key improvers and disrupters of Anudip’s skill-empowering and learning efforts. By entering a steady and humble dialogue with multiple partners at local, regional, and national levels, was also another key to Anudip’s success that has led them to define, grow, and secure ‘skilling eco-systems’, their aces in the pack.
Today, Monisha Banerjee, Anudip’s CEO who has been holding the job since 2018, is convinced that a greater interconnection between skilling and schooling can induce changes of foundational magnitude to face the inevitable disruptions to happen in the industrial and services spheres of India. With already 120 Skill and Career Development Centers in 18 states of India, three Save Centers, an office in the USA since 2018, and as recently as 2020 an office in Bangladesh, Anudip seems not to be shy about its ambitions and scaling. How to make this happen is probably something to keep Monisha and her 600+ team on high alert and moving forward. No doubt that it will be difficult to stop them from achieving their objectives.
