NYC to implement 'One School One Entrepreneurship Programme'

The National Youth Council (NYC) will be implementing the 'One School One Entrepreneurship Programme' to engage students in entrepreneurship development skills such as fishery, goat keeping, floriculture, and vegetable farming during their extra time at school. The programme will encourage students to develop entrepreneurship skills in addition to academic knowledge.

Council vice-chair Madhav Prasad Dhungel said the objective of the programme is to develop schools as a learning venue for entrepreneurship besides education and to achieve transformations and innovation through quality education. "We hope that the programme would inspire students to seek a career in entrepreneurship right from schools," he said. The main objective of the programme is that they can be self-employed while leaving school.

Under the programme, student's parents and guardians will also visit schools once a month and participate in vocational skill development activities. "The parents will be motivated to cultivate their land after observing their children being engaged in vocational at the school itself," he said and expressed the belief that this project will help teach entrepreneurship to the entire society.

The Council has called for proposals from schools throughout the country for running this scheme. The community secondary schools running classes in the technical and vocational stream or those schools selected to be developed into model schools have been urged to submit the vocational project plan within October 7. The Council's selection committee will select the proposals submitted by the schools. Altogether eight schools, including one from each province and one from the federal level, will be selected on basis of evaluation criteria determined in the implementation work format, Council's under-secretary Kamala Gyawali said. According to her, the Council will initially provide Rs 700 thousand as seed capital to the selected school. The enterprise programme will be implemented in school with the resources provided by the Council and the money the club has received from various sources.

Four hundred twenty-two schools selected by the government for model development, 484 schools running technical education programmes and the schools running the 18-month classes from Council for Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) are eligible to participate in the programme.