This platform is helping families reskill after losing earning members to Covid

The brutal second wave of the pandemic may be receding, but it has left behind a void for many families, especially those who lost their sole breadwinners.

Providing aid to such women is Women in Tech’s (WiT-ACE) ‘Family Find the Light’ (FFTL) programme, which is reaching out to people in need to not only motivate and train them, but also help them find jobs.

The programme has backing from firms like IBM, Macquarie Global Services and Freshworks. FFTL, which is being implemented on a pro bono basis, has currently enrolled 30 family members, but hopes to expand to cover 5,000 such families.


“After IBM approached us to understand how the industry could become more useful to families who lost a breadwinner, many other companies have come on board to help those in need with skilling and mentoring, so that they can move towards self-sustenance. We are pushing our network of companies heavily to hire those in need and give them the orientation and confidence to go out and work,” WiT-ACE senior adviser Navin Upadhyay said in an interview to TOI.

Prachi Rastogi, D&I leader at IBM Asia-Pacific, said, “In a crisis like this, we begin to look for outside support for talent and the process takes a lot of time. We have never seen such a synergy where the company’s demand and supply are met through this programme. We feel utmost gratitude that we could support the dependents of our precious employees who lost their lives to Covid. We never imagined we had such brilliant potential in their family members just waiting to be nurtured. We have trained a sizeable number of people through the FFTL programme. Of course, these are not just numbers, these are rays of hope for those who have lost a very important part of their lives. We respect their call to courage and we are doing everything we can to support them in time of their need.”

“With professional and emotional support, counselling, and mentoring along with skills training, this programme will allow them to move forward with their lives and provide for their kids and family,” Freshworks CHRO Suman Gopalan said, adding that the organisation was fully committed to making a difference to those who lost their earning family members to Covid.