Mumbai, Sept 21:
Global bank Citi and Pratham Education Foundation have teamed up to
pilot an Education Entrepreneur Development programme that aims to build
job skills for 5,400 youth in the rural and urban areas of Maharashtra,
Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The
programme has a corpus of Rs 1 crore.
Supported by Citi Foundation, the grant of over Rs 1 crore will equip
120 education entrepreneurs. The latter will be individuals from rural
areas with good communication skills and an entrepreneurial inclination
to deliver Pratham’s foundation course for employment to young women and
men in their villages and communities.
Industry-specific course
The foundation course will provide basic employment readiness training.
It is expected that at least half of those trained, as part of the
programme, will secure employment in the services industry, and be able
to earn Rs 6,000 to Rs 7,000 a month immediately upon training. About 25
per cent of the participants are also expected to opt for an advanced
industry-specific course such as hospitality or construction training.
Speaking about the initiative, Madhav Chavan, CEO of Pratham Education
Foundation said, “The education entrepreneur model is unique as it does
not require us to make large investments in infrastructure or human
resources and instead capitalises on a growing wave of young people who
seek to be entrepreneurs.”
Education entrepreneurs
Ajay Piramal, Chairman, Piramal Enterprises, is the chairman of Pratham
India, a non-governmental organisation in the education sector, which
reaches out to 33 million children.
Using the grant, Pratham will support the education entrepreneurs by
training them, providing the teaching material and a small stipend in
the first year. With no fixed salary, the education entrepreneurs will
instead be encouraged to grow their enterprise by mobilising more youth
into their training.
Entrepreneurs will also be helped to tie up with schools and colleges in
the vicinity, to teach the foundation course to youths and students.
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