Jaipur, Oct 4 (IANS): ICICI Foundation for Inclusive Growth (ICICI Foundation) Friday declared the launch of an ICICI Academy for Skills, to impart vocational training to the youth from economically weaker sections to help them earn livelihood.

The ICICI Group will impart training to 5,000 youth at eight training centres across the country in the first year of operation with an aim to target 15,000 by 2016.

For five years, the ICICI Group and ICICI Foundation have been focusing on areas of education, healthcare, skill development and financial inclusion.

Chanda Kochhar, MD & CEO of ICICI Bank, said: "India has a unique advantage in the form of its demographic dividend. However, translating the demographic dividend into growth and prosperity requires job creation as well as enabling the youth to acquire the skills required to benefit from employment opportunities."

Residential centres were being set up at Jaipur, Sangli and Coimbatore, and non-residential centres at Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Jaipur and Pune, said an ICICI official.

The offered courses include selling skills, office administration, web design for graduates, electrical and home appliance repair, refrigeration and air conditioning repair, diesel generator and pump repair for class 10 passouts.

The courses duration will be 8-12 weeks.

ICICI Foundation has tied up with several partners for generating the content of these courses. The partners are: Tally Solutions Pvt. Ltd. for office administration; Blue Star Ltd. for refrigeration and air-conditioning; NIIT Ltd. for web designing; and Schneider Electric India Pvt. Ltd. for electrical and home appliance repairing.

ICICI Foundation will create an online job portal for registrations, which will be promoted among potential employers.