Vision & Mission
Our Vision (Long term)
- To run tens of, or even a hundred, financially self-sustainable vocational training centres amongst the poor in India.
- Inspire/help other organisations to do the same in other countries.
- Each training centre will empower hundreds or thousands in poverty to cross digital and language divides to earn a decent crust for their families. Switched On will thus provide hope through empowerment.
- Our centres will provide ethical training as part of its courses, in areas such as integrity and attitude to work.
- The Switched On centres will be run in a reliable, professional, "Switched-on" way - to exemplify what it teaches.
- It will always have a heart for the marginalised and downtrodden.
Being financially sustainable is a key goal (or as close as we can get) because it means we will be able to introduce new centres that will not require ongoing donations (or at least at a low level).
Our Mission
So how do we plan to reach this vision?
The Switched On centres will be developed and, longer-term, we aim to run with the focus and professionalism of a successful franchise "business." We plan to develop our existing centres to run smoothly and predictably according to carefully designed and optimised processes that will deliver great service to the students. This is made possible with the assistance of computer-based training and tested structured training programmes. Ultimately, it must be very effective in enabling them to find work. Then communities will be happy to pay for training. We will also search for complementary services we can offer to earn extra money for these centres (e.g. Net cafe).
This is in no way to make profit or ignore the poor. Rather our concern is to make it financially viable to run such centres amongst the poor so that many can be opened to help the maximum number of people possible.
We will reduce our costs and deliver quality training using proven blended learning approaches (see Approach). This will require hundreds of hours of our own training material to be videoed and computerised. We will also create and refine hundreds of peer group exercises.
We are also rather smart with reducing computer and software costs (see Computer & Software Strategy below). They are less than 25% of typical computer centres.
This is undoubtedly a very stretching target and will take years to achieve. But a big vision is worthy of great commitment. Could you come and lend your skills for a time?