To encourage and guide youth, the Ministry of Labour and Human Resources (MoLHR) and the Bhutan Innovation Tech Centre (BITC) is conducting an entrepreneurship course at the Thimphu TechPark.

About 75 graduates are attending the training, which began from September 12.

Chief executive officer of TechPark, Tshering Cigay Dorji (PhD), said that the objective of the course is to encourage and guide youth who are interested in becoming entrepreneurs. “Thus, they become not only self-employed, but also create jobs for other youth. In the long run, this would help tackle the challenge of youth unemployment as well as help strengthen the foundation of our economy.”

He said that many participants are motivated to be entrepreneurs. Few of them are already running businesses. After the training, the participants are expected to start new businesses. “Supporting entrepreneurship and start-up culture has become a global trend today with many countries doing a lot to encourage youth to become entrepreneurs.”

Kinley Dukpa, a participant said that there are not many job opportunities and he wanted to be an entrepreneur to be independent. “Although I have a degree in science, I want to do business. The course is helping me form ideas that I have. We get knowledge of where to go and what to do with our ideas.”

He said that he wanted to work as a civil servant but now he wants to explore business opportunities.

Coordinator, Tshewang Dorji, said that there are two kinds of training that youth can avail of. Advanced Entrepreneurship Course (AEC) is for university graduates interested in becoming entrepreneurs and runs for 21 days. Basic Entrepreneurship Course (BEC), he said, is for those who have completed class 12 and below but is open to graduates as well. BEC runs for 15 days.

Tshering Cigay Dorji said that the training would be provided to youth in key areas provided at least 25 participants register per batch. Themed “technopreneurship for new generation start-ups”, he said that the programme targets to train about 600 youth in this financial year.

He said that the training is conducted in an interactive and immersive manner by following the Competency-based Economies through Formation of Enterprise (CEFE) methodology.

Techpark recruited the trainers who were trained by CEFE Sri Lanka. The training’s content include entrepreneurship ecosystem, ideation, opportunity spotting, market survey, lean model canvas, marketing, pitching and business plan writing.

A participant, Lakdil Dorji Dema said she attended the course to learn more about the procedure for start-ups. “I want to open my own business after doing a survey and knowing more about my idea.”

The on-going AEC ends on October 4.

Rinchen Zangmo

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