Do you believe in an Inclusive India?
Welcome to the Skill Shakti Community, Mumbai, India. We skill adults with diverse abilities to become employable and contributing members of society, with rights.
Our students, 16 years and above, learn to advocate for themselves and become independent in a fun, peer group. We use expressive arts, management coaching, computers and inspiring mentors, with a customized curriculum. You can enroll in our sessions in person in Mumbai or online within India or overseas.
The Skill Shakti Community imparts employability skills to neurodiverse adults and those with various disabilities, offering opportunities to learn and earn, from their own home or at an inclusive workplace. Our students are coached in financial literacy, digital marketing and online business, with internships awarded to qualifying candidates. We provide a job coach at the workplace and sensitization to co-workers, ensuring that employees and employers are well integrated.
Our sessions are adapted and customized to the the learning style of our students. Complex skills are broken down into nuggets of information, on a state of the art learning platform. We have lively peer groups, experienced mentors and expert career professionals to coach and counsel our neurodiverse learners. They get the opportunity to visit actual workplaces and businesses to interact with professionals in their chosen fields.
Freelance work, online business or social media talent showcase, or a job in an inclusive workplace: we match skills, aptitude and aspirations to set you up for success in your career.
Whether you are a corporate keen to hire inclusively or an adult with neurodivergent abilities, discover our Skill Shakti Community, to create an inclusive world.
Register here
The Skill Shakti Community is a strong advocate of the rights of persons with diverse abilities to thrive personally and professionally. We enable businesses to successfully hire our trained candidates to enhance diversity and inclusion goals in line with global best practices.
We take pride in skilling adults with diverse abilities to
- Lead an independent and productive life
- Become employable, contributing value to the workplace
- Create a fun community of friends and peers
- Become accepted, respected Indian and global citizens, with rights
The Skill Shakti Community's coaching sessions equip students with the three essential 'Es'
- Emotional Intelligence
- Employability
- Entrepreneurship
Our ongoing sessions impart
- Expressive skills via dance, visual arts, music and drama
- Social skills, communication, gender sensitivity, self esteem, relationships
- Executive skills, time and money management, etiquette, digital literacy, advocacy
- Thinking skills, cognitive, decision making skills; strategies for success
- Experiential skills, day and out bound camps; industry visits
- Work skills, ethics, basic IT & communication, team work
- Business skills, presentations, interviews, start your own venture, or work in your family business
These experiential modules are taught by qualified trainers in a fun team setting. Over a period of time, these lead to industry internships, supported by a job coach, leading to potential long term placement.
Focused coaching for each adult enables their further growth in digital skills, writing a business plan for their own venture, NIOS subjects among others.
Every student is given ample practice to become proficient in
- Google Slides, Docs, Sheets & Keep
- InShot video editing
- Designing on Canva
- Creating and posting original content on social media
- Creating a portfolio to showcase your unique talent
- Creating a CV
The Skill Shakti Community places its students in work experience positions that best suit their skill set and interests. The rigour of working in a professional environment is essential even to those who wish to start their own venture or work in the family business. We set up our candidates for success in the workplace by
- Matching the candidate to the right job.
- Providing an on-site job coach who breaks down the job into learnable tasks.
- Sensitising the co-workers on working with a differently-abled colleague.
- Fostering mutual understanding between the candidate and the team.
- Assigning a work buddy to facilitate long term productivity and integration.
- Monitoring and providing a comprehensive report that the business can use for inclusion and diversity goals.
Sangitaa Advani, Founder Director, Skill Shakti Community, Mumbai
Graduate of Barnard College, Columbia University, USA, Sangitaa has been a columnist-journalist at Mint, TOI and WSJ Europe for over two decades. She is Founder Chair of YPO Families with Special Needs, a global network with 1000 members. She champions innovative learning for underprivileged students at a free school in rural Tamil Nadu for the last 25 years, and has initiated an exchange program at St Xavier’s College, Mumbai. Raising their daughter with Down Syndrome to adulthood, Sangitaa deeply understands the nuances of helping people achieve their potential. Her dream is to make India truly inclusive.
Sangitaa's parenting journey
Skill Shakti thanks its Advisory Board for its knowledge and guidance. Our Board has luminaries in different domains such as inclusive practices, developmental psychology, business, higher education, intellectual disability, medicine, disability advocacy, and more.
Would you like to join a fun group of college students and volunteers to make the difference in the life of someone special?
Are you a corporate or business enterprise willing to give one of our students an opportunity to excel?
Please contact us at skillshakti@gmail.com
Are you an adult with diverse abilities who could benefit from our community sessions? You can enroll in our community after a mandatory informal assessment.
Eligibility criteria: Adults with neurodiversity, other disabilities, around 16 years and over, ideally NIOS 10th qualified (not mandatory), reasonably self-managed.
Limited seats; small group, in a relaxed environment for focused learning. Please get in touch to discuss next steps. Please contact us at skillshakti@gmail.com
Like most other parents of neurodivergent kids, I too was confused and worried about where my son's future lay. I didn't want him to enter into formal education that would have no relevance on his future; at the same time he needed to acquire several life skills to be meaningfully employed and survive in the world. Fortunately, I found out about the Skill Shakti Community while searching for options for neurodivergent individuals online and immediately contacted Sangitaa.
Nothing prepared me for all that Skill Shakti offered. In the six months that Vir has been a part of it, he has learned so many skills that will hold him in good stead throughout life: critical thinking, money management, social media, graphic design, and so many more. He has been exposed to art, culture, knowledge of the world and current events through meaningful discussions and excursions, through field trips and a variety of exciting guest speakers. Vir has gained the confidence to put up bakery stalls at two separate Christmas bazaars, using the logo designed collectively by the class and pricing his wares as computed by the class together in their money management class. The icing on the cake is the confidence Vir has acquired, the friends he has made and the spring in his step when he goes to Skill Shakti Community every morning.
I highly recommend Skill Shakti to all parents of neurodivergent individuals.