India has nearly ~250 million adolescents who will soon transition to tertiary education or the workplace. India Skills Report 2021 says only 49% of graduates are deemed employable. Every year more than five lakh youth sit for the UPSC exams for a mere thousand jobs, investing years of their lives in exam preparation for a 0.2% chance at success, instead of building skills for other careers. A big reason behind this is that young people, especially from rural and underserved communities, lack exposure and agency needed to explore diverse career pathways beyond the 4-5 traditional ones (govt. Services, doctors, lawyers, etc.), thus limiting their chances of upward mobility and contributing to their own and the country’s growth. Complicating this reality is the lack of any structured support available to students while they are in school. In well-resourced states like Haryana, there is one career counselor for around 10,000 students; in many states, there are none. We saw this as a critical space to enter and build a solution that could enable career support in schools at scale so that students had support to transition from school to higher education or employment based on their interests and aspirations and the local realities they belong to.
CareerShala integrates career guidance into the public school system, with teachers, the community, and administration playing active roles. It is implemented in Grades 9-12 through a structured, teacher-led career education model.
In Jhajjar, the program is co-created with the District Education Department to ensure alignment with local context.
Teachers facilitate career learning with activities, reflection worksheets, and career information cards. They take students through a 5-step career decision-making process: building awareness (Grade 9), making informed subject choices (Grade 10), aligning interests and skills (Grade 11), and developing concrete post-school action plans (Grade 12). The program also includes inviting local professionals as role models to inspire students with their career journeys and an annual showcase where students get a platform to share their aspirations with peers, parents, and their community.
Implementation is enabled through existing district processes, closely working with the education hierarchy to enable engaging training and empathetic monitoring.
Today, 80%+ schools implement the program indicating strong systemic adoption. The district’s commitment has also been recognized—receiving the District-level Haryana Good Governance Award (2023).
Students demonstrate increased clarity and diversification in careers, pursuing pathways such as fashion, media, etc., including accessing scholarships they had not previously considered.
CareerShala began in the Jhajjar district with 350+ teachers across 177 schools, reaching 13000+ students. Key achievements have been seeing teachers actively support student transition post-school and over 80% adoption of the program, demonstrating system adoption at scale.
This has enabled adaptation beyond Jhajjar:
- It has spread to the Haridwar district, covering 160 schools (250+ teachers) and reaching 30,000 students.
- The learnings at the district level have informed state-level partnerships with UNICEF in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Assam, where the focus is on building the capacity of state systems to deliver career guidance and ensure implementation at the district level.
- We are also developing a national-level teacher e-course for career guidance certification.
Over the next 2-3 years, the focus is on:
- Deepening district-level implementation to ensure consistent classroom delivery and stronger transition outcomes
- Strengthening post-school transition support (linking students to skilling, higher education, and opportunities in local contexts)
- Building empathetic monitoring models for state-level adoption
Our approach to scale is deliberate: not expansion through parallel programs, but through strengthening and embedding within public systems so that career guidance becomes a sustained function of schooling.
Alohomora was founded in 2017, with early work in Delhi focused on a direct facilitation model, where trained community fellows, from similar government schools themselves, delivered career awareness sessions to students. This built our strong foundation in student-centered pedagogy and how to train facilitators with no prior counseling experience, enabling adaptations for teacher-led system integration models.
CareerShala evolved into a teacher-led, system-integrated model, where government school teachers are trained and supported to facilitate career learning, with ownership anchored within the education department. This shift significantly improved scalability, cost-effectiveness, and long-term sustainability.
Building on this, the model is now evolving in two directions:
- State system strengthening: Through partnerships such as with UNICEF in Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, and Assam, the focus is on building the capacity of state systems, particularly teachers and officials, to institutionalize career guidance at scale.
- Ecosystem-led expansion: In states like Bihar, Alohomora is working with partner NGOs, building their capacity to implement career guidance programs, rather than delivering directly. This enables a wider reach while maintaining quality.
The evolution reflects a clear trajectory—from direct service delivery → district system integration → state and ecosystem-level capacity building.
Reach out to our team at hello@alohomora.org to access the CareerShala toolkit and onboarding support. We work with schools, NGOs, and governments to contextualize the curriculum, train teachers, and support implementation. The model is adaptable and designed to integrate into existing school systems with minimal additional infrastructure.
