Quest Alliance was founded in 2005 as an innovation and collaboration–focused alliance of State Governments, NGOs and Funders to demonstrate and scale up models that develop 21st century skills in learners & educators through self-learning and the effective use of education technology. With more than half the population under the age of 25, India is capable of great agility. But a disconnected education and employment sector leaves many youth unemployed or under-employed. The skills youth need to make meaning of their lives and build self-learning pathways for success in the 21st century are varied. Quest Alliance fosters 21st century skills among young people by transforming Learning Ecosystems across the school-to-work continuum. Quest’s Learner-focussed programs are designed to meet key gaps in the School-to-Work Continuum, using ed-tech, capacity-building, partner collaborations and advocacy to create real impact that changes lives.

Objectives:

• Empowering 4 million learners and educators to build 21st Century skills and integrate them in their local environments by energizing demand and building awareness on self-learning. At the same time, enabling learners, educators, institutions and other organizations with tools and processes for creating learning environments.
• Expanding partnerships with government, civil society and business to scale models of
• self-learning for 21st century skills, and facilitate innovations ‘anytime-anywhere learning’.
• Establishing advocacy alliances of thought leaders for mainstreaming self-learning for 21st century skills.
• Excelling in building robust systems, culture and leadership to scale impact

Vision: A world where young people thrive as self learners driving social and economic progress.

Mission: 'We transform learning ecosystems through education technology, capacity building and collaboration to build 21st century skills for learners and facilitators.'

• Quest’s Learner-focussed programs are designed to meet key gaps in the School-to-Work Continuum, using ed-tech, capacity-building, partner collaborations and advocacy to create real impact that changes lives.
• Middle Schools: Building responsive education systems through advocacy and capacity building to address early school drop outs, early marriages and pregnancies.
• Secondary schools: Gender-focussed interventions to counter gender bias in choices for higher education and career choices. Building critical 21st century skills in adolescent girls to encourage them to pursue higher education - particularly in STEM fields.
• Technical & Vocational Education & Training (TVET): Driving systems-change in partnership with the government and other NGOs, and Work Transitions to ensure employability for youth.

Quest believes in collaboration and supplementing existing ecosystems of training and skilling. All of Quest’s programs focus on youth from disadvantaged backgrounds from both rural and urban contexts of India. These are youth who could be dropouts from school or enrolled in short term vocational courses and planning to enter the world of work for the first time. More than 90% of the youth they work with hail from low or very low socio-economic strata of society. In many cases they are first generation high school or potentially college graduates from their families. All the youth. Quest works with are between the age of 16 – 30 years of age and are looking for career and skilling information to participate in the mainstream of employment or self-employment. They believe in creating a larger positive discourse around self learning and 21st century skills for youth, and the possibility of change in training institutes.

Over the last 10 years their work has demonstrated significant improvements in learning outcomes leveraging strengths of the non-profit, corporate sector & development agencies. Quest has raised over $11 Million USD in the last decade to address problems facing young people in India. They are a preferred Grant Partner for Corporates, Foundations, Individuals, and Development Agencies – both Indian and Global. Since its inception, Quest has impacted the lives of 1.2 million learners. Their program, Anandshala, is being implemented across 300 schools in Samastipur, Bihar, in partnership with the Bihar Education Project Council, reaching 100,000 students. Under their program, My Quest, since 2009, they have trained 290,000 youth and engaged 3500 trainers, across 25 States. Master Coach, which is the trainer development program under QA has trained 908 educators till date. They have developed around 300 hours of digital self learning content deployed through their learning platforms like the Quest App.