By Mr. R.S. Maan, Managing Director – Codleo Consulting
“be the change you want to see in the world“ – a famous quote.
Life is more than acquiring designations, a fat bank balance, the latest apple phone, a holiday in the Maldives, or riding a sports car. It’s about being “ woke “ to the environment around you and being a part of social change in any capacity. Each of us bears the responsibility to be a harbinger of change in any way we can – be it feeding stray animals on the roads, spending time with the elderly in old age homes, supporting a needy family in your neighborhood, or sharing our skillset with the young to turn their lives around.
It is this opportunity to share the technical skillset that led to the launch of Codleo Consulting’s CSR initiative in October 2020 – The Codleo Foundation.
Technical education as an agent of change is quite a niche topic as most NGOs concentrate their expertise in basic schooling or vocational subjects such as culinary, knitting, woodwork, or masonry. Technical education plays an important role as it prepares the young or old to be job-ready in the fast-moving professional sphere.
Techies or those who work in the technological space need to keep pace with the rapid advancements in their specialized fields. The tech tools & features of today become redundant tomorrow and unless the techies keep pace they find themselves cast aside by their companies.
The only way for techies to be gainfully employed is to keep abreast of the latest developments and continually reskill/upskill all their lives. It’s as simple as we moved in a few decades from floppy discs to CDs and now everything is moving to the cloud. Not literally the cloud in the sky but the reference is to cloud computing that involves delivering hosted services over the internet.
The ongoing Covid – 19 pandemic has caused massive upheavals in our personal and professional lives. Besides personal losses, many people across industries of all ranks and ages have been laid off. With their careers in the doldrums, the only way to stay afloat is to reskill/upskill and be a part of a domain / a career that is in demand or will become popular with time. It is in these times that tech courses provided by NGOs such as Codleo Foundation come as a much-needed soothing balm in these troubled times.
Courses in various tech domains such as those in the ever-expanding of Salesforce® CRM, and its numerous certifications/requirements provide employment opportunities for hundreds of thousands of people who wish to lead a better life and improve the lives of their families and indirectly their communities via their better pay packets. Salesforce® itself estimates that it would be providing around 5 lakh jobs in India in the coming years under the able leadership of its current head, Ms. Arundhati Bhattacharya.
A trained army of techies who are certified and job-ready needs to be prepared to shoulder new tech careers as they surface. It’s this gap in technical education that niche NGOs like Codleo Foundation are plugging with their free online courses, led by certified and experienced trainers who are devoting their expertise to being harbingers of social change.
Each company as part of its corporate philanthropy and CSR needs to incorporate “giving” as part of its mission & values. For digital and tech companies it is ideal for them to leverage their expertise by sharing it with the wider and marginalized communities.
For example, the transgender marginalized community can benefit from tech / digital education courses to be employment ready and merge with the mainstream, instead of being on the fringe and eking a fraught existence. Similarly, the elderly that have missed the digital literacy boat need to be educated so that they can use electronic devices to ease their lives.
We end with a very thoughtful quote by the late American cultural anthropologist, Ms. Margaret Mead – “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” It’s up to all of us to be the committed soldiers of social change in the ways we can and tech courses are an integral agent of change.
