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Bengaluru
The/Nudge Foundation, a non-profit organization, today announced a partnership with India’s leading passenger carmaker, Maruti Suzuki to train underprivileged youth in safe driving. Through its Gurukuls, The Nudge Foundation aims to train underprivileged youth across the country to become safe and responsible drivers.
The/Nudge and Maruti Suzuki will begin with training 30 underprivileged youth, both men and women in its first phase. The/Nudge foundation aims to equip over 100,000 youngsters as drivers in the next 5 years as a part of its “1 million out of poverty by 2020” mission. This is also a bid to meet the rising demand for skilled manpower in the market today as well as to create viable livelihood opportunities for youngsters from impoverished communities in the country.
As part of their CSR initiatives, Maruti Suzuki has been imparting safe driving skills among the underprivileged men and women, so that they can take up driving as a livelihood. Maruti Suzuki will train the youth at its Maruti Driving School (MDS). In its 58-hour course, MDS impart not just practical driving skills, but also inculcate safe driving culture through special sessions for behavioral training and road sense. Moreover, as a part of the programme, students will also be introduced to advanced driving training simulator for better judgment and map navigation for holistic on-road practice.
Students who finish the training, and pass the tests will also get a joint certificate from The Nudge Foundation and Maruti Driving School.
Commenting on the association, Mr. Mahesh Rajoria, AVP Driving Training, Maruti Suzuki said,
“This is yet another step for Maruti Suzuki in honoring our commitment to skilling India with respect to driving. Partnership with The/Nudge is in line with our Unnati initiative that we recently commenced. Through Unnati, we hope to inculcate safe driving skills among the underprivileged youth –men and women – make them employable as responsible drivers, while making them professionally competent and responsible in their conduct.”
Founder & CEO, The/Nudge Foundation, Atul Satija said,
“Getting the support of conglomerates such as Maruti Suzuki helps us bring to life a reality where we support an ecosystem which lacks skilled drivers, while being able to help youth find a way of supporting themselves and their family.”
The Gurukuls are The/Nudge Foundation’s flagship 4 month residential programmes designed to provide a 360 degree learning and support experience for youngsters from impoverished communities to master life, literacy and livelihood skills.
Under ‘Unnati’, Maruti Suzuki plans to train 15,000 people this fiscal, around 25% of which will be women. Maruti Suzuki has set up a network of 345 Maruti Driving Schools (MDS) and 6 Institute of Driving and Traffic Research (IDTR) across the country.
The first batch of trained drivers will graduate from The/Nudge Foundation’s Whitefield campus in Bengaluru in February 2015.
