Career GPS : Re-mapping Your Future

COVID has threatened to wipe out the aspirations of an entire generation of high schoolers in India. Considering that a quarter of India’s adolescents live below the poverty line, and another quarter has families who make just survival wages, education gives them the pathway to high-wage careers that would enable them to break this intergenerational cycle of poverty. 

India has always had a problem with school completion rates -  enrolment rates decrease as students move up the education ladder- from 99% in primary education to a mere 30% in higher education, and the rate of employment stands at 6%. Student dropouts can be attributed to a lack of career clarity, economic hardship, and gender discrimination. COVID has only aggravated the problem - India has had the longest period of school closures in the country, with millions of families affected by COVID.  The pandemic led to 30% more adolescents dropping out of education in the last academic year. As many as 1.5 million schools remained shut during 2020 due to the pandemic and lockdowns, impacting 247 million children enrolled in elementary and secondary schools in India, according to UNICEF. Economics and survival trumped education - even in a city like Mumbai, enrolment in higher education at Mumbai University decreased by 20% in 2020-21 owing to the impact of the pandemic. 

In India, 80 percent of children aged 14-18 years reported lower levels of learning than when physically at school. Out of the 253 million adolescents, 8.8% of boys and 11% of girls were estimated to be out of school in 2021. Loss of income in families has pushed millions of children to take up informal work to earn survival wages for their families. Besides,  just 1/3rd of all enrolled students received any type of learning over the last 2 years. 

The learning loss due to this is profound - especially for children at the bottom of the pyramid and even more significant in the case of first-generation high schoolers who pinned their hopes on completing school and aspiring for careers and futures that would assure them and their families of social and economic mobility. 

Children aspire for what they know as possible - a lack of awareness of opportunities and the pathways to get there further exacerbates the problem. 

The severe learning loss and lack of awareness combined with the high risk of dropping out has blocked their access to higher education and resultant high-wage career opportunities. The inequity in career opportunities has grown inexorably wider over the last 2 years.

The Career GPS uses the magic of exploration to encourage students to explore multiple career pathways to achieve aspirations,  stay in school, and aspire for a future despite the hardships of COVID. The biggest advantage of COVID has been the breaking down of barriers to access technology - the Career GPS exploits this growing acceptance of technology in everyday lives. The Career GPS is an integrated career exploration and readiness solution that helps students and their parents explore and find career opportunities in line with their interests, aptitudes, and realities through a simple android phone and a messaging service like WhatsApp. 

The Career GPS is akin to Google Maps - students log in to the GPS and find themselves at the starting point of a map! This map then exclusively helps them navigate through interest and aptitude tests, relevant career opportunities, find mentors and sets clear career milestones that they need to achieve. The map also links students to internships and apprenticeships via an employer network. Personal and career data of young job seekers is mapped against their peers to encourage movement towards career goals. The GPS thus puts the student in the driver’s seat and constantly interacts with her at every touchpoint. 

The Career GPS encompasses three components : 

• A phygital career campus in every government-run school that provides access to digital devices

• A navigable GPS platform that guides students to explore their interests, aptitudes, and realities and then directs them to explore career opportunities best suited to them. The GPS will house content that is experiential and customized to each student's unique needs. 

• A Career Chatbot integrated with the GPS that uses Whatsapp to nudge behaviors and provides access 24X7 to career information. Students exchange messages with the chatbot that guides them to the GPS to explore themselves, find options available to them, set an aspiration in line with their strengths and realities, and explore multiple pathways to reach their aspirational careers. Students discover that they can have Plan As and Bs and even Cs to reach their aspirations. All this is possible as the GPS brings together several players in the employability ecosystem onto one easy-to-navigate platform for students who are the end-users.  

Poverty is intergenerational and self-fulfilling. There is an established hierarchy in education in India - the poorest enroll in low-resourced, poor-quality public schools. Families with low disposable incomes often send their children to low-income private schools of middling quality. Antarang works with government schools and low-income private schools and colleges in urban and semi-urban regions of India.

The urban poor is a paradox in India- while physical access to education and employment is not a primary issue, existing social and economic hierarchies exclude quality services like education and exposure from reaching them and hence exclude them from decent wage career opportunities that promise social and economic mobility. The impact of Covid has led to increased enrollment of students in public schools in India owing to loss of income to families that could earlier afford low-budget private schools. 

Furthermore, students between the ages of 14-18 are at the highest risk of dropping out of school owing to the need of contributing to family income, lack of informed career support, and lack of awareness about alternative career pathways 

Antarang’s Career GPS offers a one-stop solution to address the needs of awareness, ability, and access for the urban poor aged between 14-18 years of age in India. Building awareness:

1. Self Awareness: Students will become aware of their interests, aptitude, and realities by taking psychometric tests. A personalized profile of each student is prepared on the GPS.

2. Career Awareness: Once a psychometric profile of the student has been created, he/ she will be introduced to multiple career streams linked to his/ her profile. At the same time, the student will also have access to exploring other career options as well.

3. Market Awareness: Students will be provided an understanding of how various career sectors perform in the market- employability, competition, and trends.

Building ability:

1. Career Planning: Students will be able to match their interests and aptitudes to relevant career opportunities to arrive at informed and passionate career choices

2. Ability to link education plans to work: The GPS enables students to link their next steps in education to the skills required in the marketplace, competition amongst peers, eligibility for particular careers, among others.

Building access:

1. Access to networks: Students will be able to connect with a network of mentors from the industry relevant to their aspirations, and also with peers who are aspiring for similar careers

2. Access to career opportunities: Students will be directed to relevant skilling and employment opportunities in line with their top career choices

3. Anytime access to career queries: 24X7 WhatsApp chatbot will help the students ask career-related questions in a hassle-free manner

Youth Centricity, Care, Inclusivity, and Excellence are Antarang’s core values that guide its vision, mission, and work! With 9+ years of experience with 120,000 young adults across 3 states coupled with a strong community presence and a highly agile, adaptive young team, Antarang Foundation has earned its name as one of the top organizations in the Career Guidance and Readiness sector in India. 

Our team understands the excitement, the aspirations, the fears, and the challenges faced by youth from low-income urban communities. Through our first-hand interactions with the communities and students’ families, we have been able to successfully drive actionable change in the lives of the youth and their communities. 

Our core values mentioned above make Antarang an organization that works with the youth, for the youth, and is also led by the youth.

1. Youth Centricity

   1. Focus on young adults: We have consistently focussed on less privileged youth between 14-25 years of age through our career guidance and readiness programs since 2013 

   2. Involvement of adolescents in program design and decision making

      1. Youth surveys - We conduct youth surveys at the point of designing our programs, restructuring the program design to take their feedback, and inputs into account

      2. Youth Advisory Board( YAB) - Antarang has established its very own young advisory board that comprises youth between the ages of 14-21 years, with 60% representation of young girls and members across different socio-economic classes. The YAB provides constructive feedback on key strategic decisions of the organization, it periodically learns how to build critical thinking and communicate the problems of the youth effectively to the team.

   3. The high representation of youth in the team: Average age of Antarang’s team is 27 years! 90% of the senior leadership is within the age of 35 years.

2. Care

   1. Last-mile responders: 

      1. Antarang recognizes the importance of staying relevant to the communities’ needs. Career Guidance sessions and employability training were provided in-person in centers present within the communities for 7 years. 

      2. We have collaborations with 10+ community partners to help us effectively serve the needs of the community

      3. World Economic Forum has recognized Antarang as India’s top 50 last-mile Covid responders for our efforts to understand the covid needs of the community and provide them ration support, data recharge, employment opportunities. Thereby building resilience in communities against Covid

   2. Community engagement:

      1. Parent Engagement: Integrating parent sessions as part of our programs have led us to encourage parents to support their children’s careers actively. 1000+ parent sessions and 90,000+ one-on-one student-parent counseling sessions have been conducted to break stereotypes, bring parents and students on the same page with regard to career planning.

      2. Building young community ambassadors: Basis the need of the hour, Antarang builds cadres of young people to run community-centric programs such as Covid Vaccination Awareness campaigns and drives, Student Support Ambassadors to effectively reach the students with low digital access, etc

3. Inclusivity

   1. Gender-inclusive programs and teams: 

      1. 60% of our beneficiaries are female. Further, we embed workshops to break gender-related stereotypes amongst the parents, students, and the community

      2. 90% of our team includes females. We have strict policies that prevent sexual harassment in the workplace, and also sensitize teams to be gender-inclusive through staff-wide workshops

   2. Caste and Class inclusive beneficiaries: At least 20-30% of students studying in public schools in India belong to the most marginalized castes (Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes). 

   3. Representation of multiple communities in the team: Around 30% of our workforce belongs to minority communities in India

4. Excellence

   1. Strategic collaboration with relevant civil society partners: We partner with organizations that have expertise in the domain of scaling, community engagement, youth empowerment, and career guidance in order to constantly better our programs and beneficiary interactions.

   2. Periodic internal and external evaluations: Antarang conducts annual evaluations to understand the efficacy of our programs. These learnings are shared with our donor and NGO partners to hear their feedback and input on the same.

The plethora of solutions in the education sector often drowns out relevant and time-sensitive solutions like the Career GPS. Our first and foremost reason to apply to and win a SOLVE challenge is to gain a community and access mentorship to overcome this critical go-to-market barrier that we face. 

The SOLVE community has first-hand experience in solving large socio-economic problems and hence believes strongly that collaboration is key to solving such problems - and the basis of the Career GPS is collaborative and contributory problem-solving. We look forward to learning from and contributing to the SOLVE community. 

The Career GPS is conceived of as a universal solution that would help students navigate their way from school to work in any part of the world - the global SOLVE community will challenge our assumptions and push us to develop and fine-tune the offering and also point us towards collaborations that would help solve the employability challenge that young adults across the world face.

Empowerment is differently understood by all of us at Antarang Foundation - our “customer” is the high school adolescent and the average age of the team is 27 years. Hence, we define empowerment as the ability to hold the remote control to our futures firmly in our own hands. The GPS encourages the learner to take charge of their career journey.  

The majority of less privileged adolescents in India go to government schools and low-income private schools. They are often told what to aspire of and how they can get there. Career exploration is practically non-existent in these institutions. Access to career guidance outside of schools is not affordable to many of these students. This perpetuates the inequity in the ecosystem as a lack of awareness leads to sub-optimal future choices. 

There is a strong need to enable easy and effective access to career exploration, informed transitions, and career planning for students from marginalized sections.

The current public school system in India does not embed Career Guidance or employability skills training as part of its high school curriculum. Further, there is an absence of a dedicated cadre of career counselors in each school/ school complex. This limits the access to quality career support for students from public schools. Certain states in India have a dedicated Career Portal to help students take up aptitude tests, explore information on several careers. Examples include the Maha Career Portal of the state of Maharashtra, the Rajasthan Career Portal of the state of Rajasthan, among others. These portals lack the personalization required for each student to find his/her own career aspiration and design his/her own career plan. Further, these portals only serve the purpose of awareness, without enabling students to build the ability to plan careers or provide access to relevant career opportunities. This is exactly where the Career GPS can come into the picture.

The Career GPS is envisioned to address this gap by enabling the student/ learner to set their goals, see what is available out there and provide personalized access to opportunities, thus nudging them to make informed and inspired transitions to careers of choice.  

The Career GPS is currently in its prototyping phase. Our goals for next year focus on designing and building an MVP. This will include:

1. Designing the Career GPS

2. Build an MVP using the technology of choice

3. Assess the impact and cost of the MVP to determine the impact and cost on a full scale

 The Career GPS delivers outcomes across 3 levels: It helps students explore themselves, career opportunities and expands their awareness. The estimated 5-year impact goals are:

Awareness

- 0.2 million students have a personalized self-aware profile

- 0.2 million students are aware of more than 5 career pathways in line with their interests, aptitude, and realities

Ability

- 0.2 million students have clear career plans in line with their aspirations

- 80% of the users have more than 1 suitable career pathway 

Access

- 0.2 million learners from marginalized communities will have access to careers of choice 

- 80% of users access at least one learning/ skilling opportunity through the GPS

- At least 50% of users access one experiential learning opportunity in the form of project-based or short term internships, and apprenticeships

 - At least 50% of users connect with mentors relevant to their chosen career streams.

Antarang aims to monitor the progress of our goals through a Career GPS dashboard. The dashboard will track

• Details of all unique users registered on the GPS

• Unique psychometric profiles created on the GPS

• Student profiles with clear career plans on the GPS

• Career linkages per registered user on the GPS

If students are aware of the world of opportunities, are able to make self-aware career choices, and have access to opportunities, then all adolescents, irrespective of their socio-economic status will have access to equitable career pathways leading to social and economic mobility. We envision Career GPS to be the tool that leads to self-driven, and informed career expiration, enabling high school students who are at the risk of dropping out of education or work to take up sustainable career pathways in education, training, or employment.

Inputs

1. Career Exploration - awareness of self and 40+ career streams

2. Transition Support Services  to students of grades 10 and 12 in the form of information about programs and courses of study, link to exam registration, help with admission formalities

3. Career Development Platform with access to continued career development,  training, mentoring, and employment opportunities

Outputs

1. Students create personalized psychometric profiles and explore at least 5 career options in line with their profiles

2. Students access information and make clear choices through the GPS 

3. Students sign up/ apply for at least one career development opportunity in line with their aspiration

Outcomes

1. Students arrive at an inventory of self-aware career choices and have a clear career plan

2. Students access information and make clear choices through the GPS 

3. Students successfully transition to higher/ vocational education or apprenticeships immediately after Grade 10/ 12 

4. Students stay compliant with their career plan and progress toward their career goals 

The Career GPS is envisaged to be an App that talks to a core organizational database and multiple platforms in the ecosystem. It will extensively use data science tools along with AI/ML and cross-platform APIs to provide inputs to the students on the optimum path to reach their career goals. A sample use case indicating the use of the technology stack is given below:

1. A student who has a career aspiration to become a data scientist registers on the Career GPS App and takes an aptitude test that is customized towards this aspiration. He also indicates his family’s income profile.

2. Data Science tools working on the data collated earlier for all students who have succeeded as data scientists indicate that the probability of this student succeeding as a data scientist is low because some of the skills required are not at the required level (as indicated by the results of the aptitude test). At the same time, the tool also recognizes that this skill can be upgraded through some courses that the student can take. It can do this because the change in the skill level of earlier students with similar profiles is stored in the database. Since the student has also indicated his family income level which is low, the tool uses cross-platform API to talk to an ed-tech platform and recommends free courses that the student can undertake to increase his skill.

3. The student undertakes the course and retakes the aptitude test. He also indicates his satisfaction level with the course he has undertaken. The GPS now records the change in skill level and student satisfaction and uses AI/ML to decide if the same course from the same skill provider should be recommended for any other student with similar skill deficiency in the future.

The database has also stored information on the universities offering Data Science as a program and the funding required over a 4 year period for a student to graduate in each of them. Based on the family income and the funding required for the program, the GPS recommends the universities that the student could apply to, and using APIs also indicates the success rates of these applications. The GPS also indicates potential financial support opportunities that the student could access by querying a platform that stores updated information on the financial support opportunities. When the student applies for this financial support, the GPS stores the outcome (successful/unsuccessful) and uses AI/ML to fine-tune the recommendations for future students. 

It’s not about just opening the invitation to everyone — it’s about making sure that every individual knows and feels that they are welcome at Antarang. Antarang incorporates DEI at the recruitment level and in our employee care and development.

1. Recruitment- Antarang ensures to hire individuals from diverse genders, religions, caste, abilities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. We ensure to share our Job Descriptions in safe spaces that are specifically created for individuals who would/could have felt marginalized at workplaces. Our values and hiring rubric also have a special score to ensure a more diverse workplace. As a result, Antarang has over 75% women in its workforce, and all our staff members are from diverse backgrounds.

2. Internships: Antarang employees only its beneficiaries as interns post-program, our long-term goal is for our students to run the organization. We ensure that they receive the development opportunities to move up the ladder. In our short journey, 2 of our beneficiaries have already reached senior associate roles at Antarang Foundation. Our beneficiaries are mainly first-generation learners who belong to urban poor communities in India.

3. Leaves: Antarang provides well-being leaves to its employees along with recognizing diverse beliefs and religions while setting leaves for the year. Additionally, Antarang provides floater leaves on important festivals of all minorities in the organization, even if it is not a declared public holiday. 

Antarang Foundation is a registered not-for-profit organization in India. We primarily rely on grants and donations to fund our work. Our key services include providing career guidance and readiness to youth from public schools and low-income colleges between the ages of 14-18 years. 

1. Partnerships:

   1. We enter into partnerships with district and state governments to implement our Career Guidance and Readiness programs across public schools under their respective jurisdiction

   2. We enter into partnerships with individual colleges and universities to implement our Career Readiness program in their institutions

2. Provision of service

   1. Our Career Guidance and Readiness programs are then implemented phygitally- in-person sessions combined with asynchronous digital sessions in the schools and colleges for which we have received permissions. These sessions are conducted by trained career facilitators/counselors.

   2. The CareerGPS will be rolled out primarily via the phygital sessions by the trained career facilitators

   3. Additionally, the GPS will also be publicized on government websites, on Antarang’s social media handles, website, and on other portals related to career guidance and readiness

3. Payment for services

   1. We offer our programs free of charge to our partners. 

4. Funding of services

   1. We are a primarily grant-funded institution

   2. We raise funds through 4 main donor categories: Corporate CSR partners in India and abroad, non-profit institutions/ trusts in India & abroad, HNIs, and individual retail donors. 

5. Sustainability of the model: 

   1. Antarang envisages the state to include career guidance and career readiness as part of the high school curriculum - with the state funding the resources made available to the students. 

The sustainability of the model is envisaged in 2 ways. As career planning and career readiness for marginalized young people is a social justice issue and is the responsibility of the state, we believe that public expenditure and CSR-sponsored resources are both keys. Hence a multi-year grant pipeline along with budget allocation from the public education budgets are both critical for sustainability. While multi-year grants are already a reality for Antarang, we are currently advocating for career readiness to be budgeted for in the state education budgets. 

Antarang’s donors are largely the CSR arms of companies, Foundations, Trusts, HNIs, and retail individual donors. We have a diversified funding portfolio to spread risk and ensure cash flows for working capital. We have also built a fair pool of reserves that helped us stay resilient and employee-friendly during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. 

Our annual org budget for 2021-22 is USD 1.01 million and is estimated to be USD 1.2 million in 2022-23, and USD 1.6 million in 2023-24 as we scale our operations in new geographies. We have been able to successfully raise funding through grants and donations for the past 9 years, and have remained a 100% compliant organization. Our major donors include J P Morgan, UBS Securities, EMpower, ATE Chandra Foundation, among 10 others. Since 2018, we have entered into multi-year grants with the aforementioned key partners along with annual grants with other corporate and institutional partners like the Microsoft Corporation, British Asian Trust, Harvard Business Publishing, and others. Our donor retention rate has been over 60% in the past 3 years. 

Our ultimate goal is to ensure that career guidance and career readiness are provided as part of high school education - hence we are advocating for the allocation of budgets by the state. Over the last 2 years, the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai has allocated funding for the Career Chatbot and also to set up Phygital Career Campuses in schools.

Antarang engages its donors beyond financial commitments through partnerships in strategy, technology, and knowledge sharing. Further, their employees engage with us to mentor our students, as expert speakers and provide placement opportunities. This has led to a pool of actively engaged and informed set of donors.