A system to upskill 200 million learners and to remove the global skills and employability gap

Abstract

Otermans Institute (OI) is a global company upskilling unserved and underserved populations with the mission of making populations of the world employable. Currently working in nine countries, supported by UKRI grant funding, OI is providing its solutions physically, digitally, and using Artificial Intelligence and aims to upskill 750 million learners by 2025. From remote schools to foundation-run organisations to UN camps in Iraq, OI has supported over 25,000 unserved learners to date. Through immersive research across 3,200 kilometres in South Asia, OI developed a blanket curriculum and teaching & training method that can upskill 200 million learners in India today. The same system can be replicated in other Southern Asian countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar and Sri-Lanka where 80 million other students can benefit immediately. Currently, this system has been taken by two state governments in India and by the Technical Education Department of the Government of Afghanistan. The original methodology of the research and curriculum development will be presented in this paper.

Although delays were caused by the COVID-19 pandemic to fully test the impact of the system over a significant period of 2020, the need and usability of the system has been accepted in nine countries. Based on the impact findings of the system over the next 9 months, further development and testing will be done with the target of making it a universal system across Asia.