Hyderabad, July 06: A unique corporate initiative for employment generation 'LABS' (Livelihood Advancement Business School) plans to expand the network across the country to provide 1 million jobs by 2005, chairman of pharma major Laboratories and chief mentor of the project Anji Reddy has said. Aimed at imparting job-oriented training courses to youth from poor and educationally deprived families and putting them in entry-level jobs in various industries, LABS has created livelihood opportunities for 5,000 people since its inception three years ago.
"Enthused by the success of this experiment, we have set a very ambitious target of training one million people by 2005 and are planning to expand the programme across the country," Reddy told reporters on the sidelines of the first conference of corporate consortium on livelihoods.

The LABS programme, currently being implemented in six states including Andhra Pradesh with leading corporate groups being part of the initiative, consists of three months of classroom training followed by three months of on-the-job apprenticeship.
The students, in the age group of 18 to 25 years and drawn from economically and educationally challenged background, are imparted multi-skill development training. Bureau Report