Microsoft, NSDC to empower over 1L women with digital skills

According to the company, the programme will curate a series of live training sessions and digital skilling drives to help create opportunities for young girls and women.

New Delhi: Microsoft on Wednesday announced a collaboration with the National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) to skill more than one lakh underserved women in India over the next 10 months.

This initiative is an extension of Microsoft’s partnership with NSDC to provide digital skills to over one lakh youth in the country.

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The partnership is focused on enhancing women’s workforce participation by equipping underserved young women from rural communities with the skills required to thrive in a digital economy.

As part of the collaboration, more than 70 hours of course content will be made available free of cost, covering topics such as digital literacy, enhancing employability, nano entrepreneurship and communication skills.

“Our partnership with NSDC is aimed at bridging the gender gap in access to digital skills, enabling everyone to succeed in a digital economy,” Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India, said in a statement..

According to the company, the programme will curate a series of live training sessions and digital skilling drives to help create opportunities for young girls and women, particularly first time job seekers.

These live training sessions will be delivered online through the Microsoft Community Training (MCT) platform.

The MCT platform will also allow the trainees to access rich content already available on MCT as well as provide a forum to engage with peers.

Under this partnership, eSkill India, NSDC’s digital skilling initiative, will support in building the outreach of this engagement through its skilling ecosystem which includes sector skill councils, training partners, and training centres.

Also, Microsoft and NSDC will award a joint e-certificate to participants post course completion.

Furthermore, 20,000 young women from regions with least female labor force participation will be selected by NSDC and skilled through a dedicated skills for employability training program for employment in IT/IT enabled job roles.

“Our partnership with Microsoft will help in economic empowerment of women,” said Dr Manish Kumar, MD and CEO, NSDC.