Guwahati: Quest Alliance, a non-profit trust engaged in providing life and soft skills to youths with support from Cisco's corporate social responsibility initiative, on Monday partnered the Assam government's directorate of employment and craftsmen's training to introduce high-quality employability skills and career-development curriculum in three Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) of the state.

Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational technology conglomerate that develops, manufactures and sells networking hardware,

With support from Cisco, Quest is providing self-learning to bridge the education and skills gap in digital literacy needs of India and this initiative in Assam is the latest development in that endeavour.

Senior programme manager of Quest Alliance Ashutosh Tosaria said: "In the first phase we are introducing this project in three government ITIs - the Women's ITI in Guwahati, Morigaon ITI and Tezpur ITI. We aim to provide life and soft skills including spoken English, career guidance and workplace guidance to students and trainers. Around 1,300 students will be trained up in the first year. With the help of Cisco, we have set up employability skills labs in the three ITIs with 15 computers each. This is our first project in Assam and we will take the project to other states of the Northeast in due course."

Last year, Quest trained 10,000 students on life, work, and career skills across 25 ITIs in three states.

The project was inaugurated by secretary of skill, employment and entrepreneurship department, Honmili Teronpi.