WE ARE RESEARCHING HOW TO MAKE EDUCATION MORE ACCESSIBILE FOR YOUNG ADULTS IN ONE OF THE WORLD’S POOREST COUNTRIES

In India, many young adults (aged 18-25 yrs) are unnecessarily trapped in poverty: they want to learn skills that will enable them to earn a higher salary, but do not have access to the education they need. One of the key barriers is financing: low income young adults simply do not have the funds to pay for their education upfront.

UpSkill Capital was formed by six recent graduate students with a single purpose: find a way to sustainably make Vocational (skills-based) education more accessible to low income young adults in India. To this end, we have developed a new way to fund vocational training: we pay for students’ tuition upfront and upon completion of their training, students enter paid internships, where a portion of their wage is taken to repay tuition costs. The repaid money is used to help finance another student, creating a sustainable cycle of education funding.

OUR PILOT PROJECT

We are planning a pilot research project in early 2013 in partnership with ETASHA Vocational Education Society (http://www.etashasociety.org). The aim of the pilot project is to further research our concept by sponsoring 400 students to be trained and tracking their transition from schooling to the workforce. Once our model is validated, our goal is to help educate over 4 million students over the next 10 years, moving them out of poverty and into the lower middle class.

WE DID IT!

Our fundraising campaign (via Indiegogo) brought home $25,090! This means that we are now well on our way to helping educate and lift 400 students out of poverty through vocational education. We would like to thank the following fantastic people who are major donors to our Indiegogo Funding Campaign. Thank you for your kind generosity - we appreciate your support!

Ashish Srinivasan

Mukund Ramachandran

Santiago Gravito

Prakash Somasundaram

Karam Malhotra

Karl Schindler

Ashrith Ramachandran

Dillon Anderson

Nikhil Jaisinghani

Tash Peiris and Yeshwant Mudaliar

John Hanson

Lauren Trent

Aakar Vachhani

Lee Schindler

David Chen

Sabrina Holgate

Sarah Brindle

AJM Segers

Hema and Ravi Nayyar

Sheerin Vesin

Marcelo Ogaz

Erin and Seth Schindler

Natalia Herrera Azabache

Serge Longin

Priyanka Prasad

Arjuna and Asawari Ratnachandra

Elissa Arkinstall & Priyesh Upreti

Andres Morita

Ivan Jimenez de Sandi

Max Ramberg

Carrie Campbell

Sarah Blake

Maria Galindo

Michal Laube

Julie Sunser

Paola Sapienza

Jalpan Shah

Manoj Jagtiani