Meera, Founder, Youth4Jobs
Today on our episode we are pleased to have Meera Shenoy in conversation with our host Ashutosh Garg. Meera is the founder of Youth4Jobs and she has dedicated her life to train and employ underprivileged and disabled youth.
Podcast
Overview
Today on our episode we are pleased to have Meera Shenoy in conversation with our host Ashutosh Garg. Meera is the founder of Youth4Jobs and she has dedicated her life to train and employ underprivileged and disabled youth. In the interview, Meera tells us about the work done by her organization Youth4Jobs. She works with underprivileged and vulnerable youth from villages, skilling and linking them to jobs. She firmly believes that every youth with abilities should have access to education and jobs and her work has proven that over the years. Meera explains how she helps companies and boards sensitize about disabilities and help them create an inclusive environment for the disabled. She explains to us how the disabled youth are put into customer-facing jobs and not at the back so that the community also gets a chance to blend with them. Meera then shares a little about her work at Employment Generation and Marketing Mission(EGMM), which is the first skilling mission of the country. Her work made a significant impact by the employment of underprivileged youth at many entry-level jobs. Meera has been awarded and recognized throughout the country and overseas, she’s the recipient of a National Award for empowering the disabled people by the President of India. She’s also authored a book titled ‘You Can’. Her work is an inspiration for everyone. Tune in to find more!
#disabilities #inclusion #employment #underprivileged #socialsector #podcast
Profile
Meera Shenoy is a pioneer in job-linked skilling of rural, tribal and young people with disabilities from underprivileged families, at scale. She set up and led EGMM, Indias’ first state government skilling mission , then consulted for the World Bank and UN across South east Asia. She is now Founder-CEO, Youth4Jobs (www.youth4jobs.org), which focusses on mainstreaming youth with disabilities in education and the workplace. In just 8 years, Youth4Jobs has become the largest organisation in this space and is a recognised System Changer .Y4J skills both youth with disabilities with less education from rural areas and educated youth in colleges. And makes the last mile connect to jobs. It has a presence in 28 states of India and works with a network of over 500 companies. In the process, it helps companies begin or strengthen their journey of inclusion. The work is challenging but transformational. The work has won several national and international awards. Like the National award of empowerment of disability from Hon’ble President of India and Asia winner of MITs prestigious Future of work, Inclusion Innovation award. The work was also recently covered in a Harvard Business School publication as a case study. Her inspirational book “You Can”,a Bloomsbury publication was released at the Jaipur Literary festival and is in third edition. She also runs a portal called Not Just Art which showcases work of artists with disability and has an annual “Ability” art award with Unesco.
