Partnership inked to catalyze entrepreneurship initiatives

Ministry of Skill Development & Entrepreneurship (MSDE), National Skill Development Corporation (NSDC) and the Wadhwani Foundation announced a strategic partnership aimed to catalyze Government of India’s broad policies and new initiatives on skill development and entrepreneurship.

According to the official source, collaboration and support is aimed to catalyze Government of India’s broad policies and new initiatives on skill development and entrepreneurship. Objective is also to scale with speed towards fulfilling the Government’s vision of job creation and skill development for Indian youth.

Key areas of collaboration include creating specific programs on entrepreneurship education & training within our college systems, integrating skills at school and higher education levels, skill development through multi-skill Institutes and skill universities, fostering an ecosystem of mentors & investors, supporting policies for both entrepreneurship and skilling,  and setting up of a National Project Implementation Committee.

Hon’ble Minister of State (I/C) for Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Rajiv Pratap Rudy said, “Strategic partnerships with organisations that express deep interest to promote entrepreneurship and encourage skill development initiatives in India is a big step towards scaling skilling initiatives in India. This cooperation has given us enough strength and support to carry forward the initiatives in this sector. The creation of the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship is a dream project of the Hon’ble Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, envisaging to bring under one umbrella skill development programmes currently spread across various Ministries and Departments. The outcome is to create more jobs such that people who are skilled and trained get employed and the demand of the demographic dividend of the country is satiated.”

Wadhwani Foundation will leverage this partnership with MSDE and NSDC to upscale its existing Entrepreneurship Education Program in universities/colleges over the next 3 years. This will include creation of online entrepreneurship content, pedagogy & best practices and delivered through ICT by qualifying and training Entrepreneurship Educators and local faculty. A few central hubs along with many regional centres each for designing, facilitating, monitoring and evaluation will be the facilitators.

Sunil Arora, Secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship stated that the National Entrepreneurship Network (NEN) of the Foundation has created a strong network through 600 colleges, 4000 mentors and 3000 faculty members that continue to create and support emerging young entrepreneurs. The entire ecosystem of skilling is intricate and involves not just skilling but also re-skilling, up-skilling and multi-skilling. These are the real islands of excellence and need to be scaled up throughout the country.

Wadhwani Foundation’s funding will be utilized on initiatives relating to program design, institute design, curriculum design and development, faculty development, etc. MSDE, NSDC and Wadhwani Foundation will set up a National Project Implementation Committee (NPIC) which will review the setting up and working of PMU on a periodic basis.