Government of Kerala has initiated an ambitious Programme, the Additional Skill Acquisition Programme (ASAP) with the objective of tackling the issue of growing unemployment in the state.The Programmes aims at equipping selected school/college students with skills in Communication, IT and selected areas of industry and service sectors.At Level 1, ASAP imparts 300 hours of skill training to selected first year students (30 per batch, maximum 2 batches in an institution). Of this, 180 hours will be a foundation module comprising of Communication Skills and IT skills and the remaining 120 hours will be the module related to the skill sector chosen by the student. More details on the Programme are available at www.ssdp.kerla.gov.in

ASAP Level 1 Programme, which commenced in 2012, is a combination of three courses, namely, Communication Skills in English, Basic IT and an Elective Domain Specific Skill Course. The Programmes are developed, delivered, assessed and certified with the active participation of the related industries to ensure labour market acceptance of the programmes. By imparting communication skills in English and Basic IT courses to a large student community, the project envisages to create a large talent pool that can work in modern day organizations that promote a global work environment. By choice, student groups receive sector specific skills that further enable them to be employable and industry ready. There are 35 and 27 students in the two batches respectively after the course was started.