Swades Foundation Request for Proposals: Skill Development for Disadvantaged Youth

Deadline: 13 January 2017

Swades Foundation has partnered with HSBC India and is inviting proposals from NGOs under the HSBC Skills for Life programme for skills training projects that have specific emphasis on empowering youth from disadvantaged communities.

HSBC Skills for Life is a five year INR 100 crore commitment by HSBC India that will focus on employment and entrepreneurship-linked skill development of disadvantaged youth, upskilling of teachers and educators, and women’s empowerment through financial education and livelihood enhancement. Under the umbrella of this programme, HSBC and Swades Foundation have forged a five-year INR 50 crore partnership that will directly skill thousands of disadvantaged youth across the country and indirectly impact and inspire many others.

The focus of the HSBC Skills for Life programme in partnership with Swades is to enable at least 30,000 disadvantaged youth to become employable and enter and sustain employment and enterprise opportunities in India in the next 5 years through skill development.

As part of this partnership, Swades Foundation has announced this ‘Request for Proposal’ seeking proposals that will focus on employment linked skill development of disadvantaged youth.

Grants Available

For 2017, the programme has ear-marked INR 11 crore to be disbursed as grants to NGOs for projects that skill youth and link them to employment opportunities. The grant size available for individual project is between INR 25 lakhs and INR 75 lakhs for a project duration of 12 to 18 months.

Eligibility Criteria

To be eligible to apply for this grant, the organization:

Must be a registered not for profit entity in India (Society, Trust or a Section-25/ Section-8 company)
Must not be a corporate foundation/ trust
Must have a valid FCRA registration
Must have a valid 80G tax exemption certificate
Must have annual reports for the last 3 years and audited financial statements for the last 3 years
Must have filed Income Tax Returns for the last 3 years
Does not have any pending criminal/ FCRA cases against it in court
Must have at least a three year track record of implementing skills building projects or have been working with disadvantaged youth

The proposal submitted:

Must benefit disadvantaged youth, defined as,
- Age: Youth between 15 – 25 years (this outer limit will be relaxed by 10 years for youth with disabilities)
- Economic profile: Is classified as (a) BPL (below poverty line) by government of India and/ or (b) belongs to a household with an annual household income of less than INR 2,00,000 per annum
- Location: situated in urban or rural areas
- Education/ experience profile: is either in school or out of school, but currently neither in formal employment (excluding self-employment) or training. Young men and women who are self- employed will be eligible provided they fall in the socio-economic profile defined above.
Should be of duration of 12 to 18 months.
Must request for grant between INR 25 lakhs and INR 75 lakhs. The total budget requested should not exceed 20% of the organisation’s income/ turnover in the previous year (i.e.; year 2015 -16). This implies; for example, an organization with a turnover of INR 2 Crore in 2015-16 can request upto a maximum of INR 40 lakhs.
Expenses budgeted from the grant towards capital/ infrastructure costs should not exceed 15% of the grant requested and must not be towards the construction of buildings and the purchase of land or property.
Administration costs budgeted from the grant should not exceed 10% of the grant requested.
Proposal should focus on linkages with industry for training and placement. At least 70% job placement is expected from the projects.
Proposal should demonstrate standardisation to national standards in terms of curriculum.