Entrepreneurship development centres to come up in over 100 govt institutes in NE

The EDCs shall develop an entrepreneurial mindset among the students of ITIs and NSTIs

Entrepreneurship development centres (EDCs) will be established in over 100 government-run skill training institutes in the Northeast to provide the youth with mentoring and handholding support, and assist them in developing financial linkages, a release said on Saturday.

The Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) has been assigned the responsibility of establishing these centres in all 104 government Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and three National Skill Training Institutes (NSTIs) in the eight states of the region. The project is under the flagship central scheme 'Skill Strengthening for Industrial Value Enhancement'(STRIVE), being implemented by the Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship.

The project is aimed at creating a pool of 107 trained mentors who shall operate from the ITIs and NSTIs and act as 'change agents' to drive the entrepreneurial movement among the youth, the release said. It is targeting 29,500 enrolled students of ITIs and NSTIs from across the eight states, who will initially undergo two days of 'entrepreneurship awareness programme' (EAP) in the first stage. In the second stage, a total of 14,000 selected students from the EAP programmes will undergo an intensive 'entrepreneurship development programme' (EDP).

A specially designed 'faculty development programme' (FDP) will also be undertaken by the IIE, Guwahati, to train the 107 faculty members from all the ITIs, who will then act as entrepreneurship trainers and mentors in their respective institutes and continue with the activities of EDCs. The EDCs shall develop an entrepreneurial mindset among the students of ITIs and NSTIs, train students on different aspects of entrepreneurship, help them in setting up skill-based enterprises, assist them in developing financial linkages through various government schemes and provide handholding and mentoring support, the release added.