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.