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Wadhwani Foundation and Magic Bus announce a strategic partnership to strengthen L.E.A.P (Life Skills based Employment Assistance Program)

  • Funding by Wadhwani Catalyst to strengthen L.E.A.P, the youth skilling and job placement program of Magic Bus with a specific focus on retention
  • Wadhwani Foundation and Magic Bus are in strong alignment that this is an investment in the soul of India – its youth, and its future
  • Wadhwani Catalyst sees immense potential in skilling the Indian youth, with over 62% of the population in the working-age group and ~54% of the population below 25 years of age. 

Bangalore, March 30th 2022: Wadhwani Foundation and Wadhwani Catalyst today announced a three-year strategic partnership with Magic Bus to strengthen their processes related to placement and retention in L.E.A.P, the youth skilling and job placement program of Magic Bus that has already transformed the lives of over 50,000 youth.

Speaking on the partnership, Sanjay Shah, Chief Operating Officer, Wadhwani FoundationIndia/SEA, said, “Wadhwani Foundation is excited to partner with Magic Bus whose L.E.A.P program is unique and high-impact, skilling thousands of youth from the underserved and marginalized communities for aspirational job roles in growth sectors.  They are driving change and creating a jobs-led impact. We look forward to leveraging the Wadhwani ecosystem to help Magic Bus intensify their skills efforts and touch more lives.”

This first of its kind, outcome-focused partnership will not only ensure that the post graduating Magic Bus students continue to be trained well in 21st-century life skills and placed in aspirational job roles in high growth sectors of Banking, IT & ITeS, Sales & Marketing, and Healthcare but also their sustained employment for at least six months at family-supporting income levels.

Commenting on the funding closure, Siddharth Dhondiyal, Executive VP – Venture Fast Track & Catalyst at the Wadhwani Foundation, said, “Our partnership with Magic Bus exemplifies the strategy of Wadhwani Catalyst to catalyze the growth of players in India who have the capability and commitment to enable large scale job creation. We look forward to working closely with Magic Bus in this journey.”

This funding by Wadhwani Catalyst is in sync with its mission of amplifying impact through grant support to catalyse large-scale job creation. Wadhwani Catalyst will also enable Magic Bus to build better processes and systems for efficiently tracking students post-placement and providing post-placement support.

Expressing Happiness on this strategic tie-up with Wadhwani Catalyst, Jayant Rastogi, Global CEO, Magic Bus, said, “This is  a one of its kind high impact skilling partnership which will ensure that young people in the age group of 18-25 years  have market relevant skills, are able to confidently transition into the world of work and have sustainable livelihoods. This partnership will enable Magic Bus to further build on the existing ecosystem it has created in the skilling space, to ensure upward mobility of young people in jobs and build a robust technonolgy based platform to  track and measure impact.

Arun Nalavadi, Executive Director- Sustainability and Partnerships, Magic Bus expressed, “This partnership will  bring about a ‘cultural shift’ in how skilling is viewed in India. There continues to be an impetus on placements and lesser focus on retention and career transition of young people. This funding support  will give us an opportunity to emerge as ‘key quality players’ in the development space, and the learning from this partnership can be shared widely for others to  learn from and replicate.”

About Wadhwani Foundation

Wadhwani Foundation was founded in 2000 by Dr Romesh Wadhwani, with the primary mission of accelerating job creation in India and other emerging economies through large-scale initiatives in entrepreneurship, small business growth, innovation, and skilling. The Wadhwani Foundation operates in 20 countries, including India, Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines), East Africa (Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda), Southern Africa (South Africa, Botswana, Namibia), West Africa (Nigeria, Ghana), Egypt, and Latin America (Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Chile). The Wadhwani Foundation works in partnership with governments, foundations, corporations, and educational institutes. For more details on Wadhwani Foundation, please visit https://www.wfglobal.org/

 About Magic Bus

Magic Bus is one of the largest poverty alleviation programmes in India, impacting 3,75,000 children and young people in 22 states and 80 districts. It delivers its sports activity-based sessions to ~2000 communities and ~1000 schools in both urban communities and remote rural areas. Since the Livelihood programme began in 2015, it has 42 livelihood centres through which ~30,000 youth have been trained and more than 70% placed in jobs in the organised sector with an average salary in excess of INR 11,000. Magic Bus also works in Nepal, Bangladesh, and Myanmar, with 6000 children in 40 communities and 31 schools. It has networking and fundraising offices in the US, UK, Singapore and Germany.