The International Centre for Entrepreneurship and Career Development and International Labor Organization have joined hands to develop 100 potential entrepreneurs from the city’s slums.
The ILO-ICECD’s Start and Improve Your Business programme is aimed at empowering groups of women and men with little or no education, and who hail from economically backward communities.
These potential entrepreneurs will be given access to new economic opportunities and taught entrepreneurship skills, said Hina Shah, Director, ICECD, here on Tuesday.
Also in Maharashtra, Bengal
The population of Ahmedabad is projected to triple from the existing 40 lakh to 1.2 crore by 2026. Almost 40 per cent of the city’s population are slum-dwellers with little or no access to basic services, while an additional 18 per cent live in under-serviced tenements.
The project will begin next month in some slum areas where people are engaged in traditional businesses.
ICECD plans to now tap them for sectors such as footwear, garments and handicrafts, food products and other smaller trades.
Phase I of the project will also be implemented for two years in Uttar Pradesh (Sonbhadra and other districts) and Maharashtra (Jalgaon, Nashik, Ahmednagar and other districts) apart from Gujarat. In Phase II, it will be carried out in West Bengal and Karnataka.
ILO selected ICECD to become its training service provider for the programme from among more than 60 national agencies.
It targets those potential entrepreneurs who are eager to start or diversify/expand their own business operations but lack a feasible business idea. The training intervention is designed to assist these potential entrepreneurs in identifying whether they are indeed the right people to start businesses, feasible business ideas and in choosing the one business idea that best matches their personal entrepreneurial characteristics with the local environment.