CII - SR Summit on Skills, Education and Entrepreneurship held in Chennai

CII – SR organized the Regional Summit on Skills, Education and Entrepreneurship on 2^nd August at Hotel Taj Coromandel, Chennai. The event saw active participation from many stakeholders in the Skills and Education space and the audience engagement was absolutely remarkable till the last session. Hon’ble Shri Banwarilal Purohit, Governor of Tamil Nadu, inaugurated the summit. Mr. Namasivayam Reguraj Co-chairman, Skills-Sub Committee – CII-SR and Mr N. K Ranganath, Chairman , Job-Creation Sub-committee, CII-SR, briefed the audience about the significance of the platform the summit would create in taking forward dialogues and discussions on the evolving 3E ecosystem in India. Mr. Sujiv Nair, CEO, TASK, proposed the vote of thanks at the end of the inaugural session. The six plenary sessions that followed had key speakers from the industry, the government, training partners, NGOs, and academic institutions.

National Skills Network – NSN had the opportunity to associate with the event, early on as a Knowledge partner and conceptualize the entire program along with the CII-SR team. There were many discussions between us while we drafted the goals of the program, identified the speakers and aligned their contribution and background with the theme of the event. Since this was one-of-its-kind event on exploring the relationship between Education, Skills and Entrepreneurship, we looked at the larger goal of how India’s development dialogue can be taken forward by placing the need for skill development as a part of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), how the young can be inspired to take the route to entrepreneurship and what would be the impact of Industry 4.0 on present and future workplace. The contribution of CSR, innovative strategies for forging sustainable partnerships between the key players were also considered as key areas of deliberations.

The inaugural session set the tone of the event by highlighting issues related to scaling the skill development initiatives, ease of delivering skills, reaping demographic dividend, need for improving basic education and benchmarking with the international standards and so on. Appreciating CII’s efforts in promoting skills and education, the Governor re-emphasized how India have accelerate its path to development through entrepreneurship promotion, besides managing the aspirations of youth and channelizing them in the right direction. The role of the industry in bringing together skills, education and entrepreneurship and driving the initiatives through technology-enablement were appropriately placed before the audience.

Click here to view the complete list of speakers at the CII – SR Regional Summit on Skills, Education and Entrepreneurship.

A note on NSN’s presence in the plenary session on Holistic Education

Our founder Dr Madhuri Dubey, Founder – National Skills Network – NSN, moderated the plenary session on the need for a synthesised ecosystem for holistic education that includes technology enabled learning. The speakers in this session included Dr Manohar Chikkanna, Dean, International School of Business and Research, Ms. Merlia Shaukat, CEO, Madhi Foundation, Aakash Sethi, CEO, QUEST Alliance and Mr. C. Prakash, Training and Development Specialist, Ashok Leyland. The core message from the speakers brought out the need for experimenting with different models of teaching-learning that encourages self-discovery, experiential learning and a drive to excel in various educational pursuits.

The speakers in this session presented their views and experiences in enriching the current education programs at schools and college levels through interventions in teaching methodology and learner engagement. Their efforts are directed at how education can enlighten individuals, make them better human beings, empower communities, drive industrial growth and sustainable economic development. Mr. Prakash focused on the need for practical hands-on, application oriented learning citing the training conducted at Ashok Leyland.

Dr. Manohar spoke about learnability as a skill and how it helps in creating a self – identity. Ms Merlia shared her experience of initiatives in enriching school level learning for government and low-fee private schools. Mr Aakash Sethi shared his perspective of technology-enablement in facilitating learning, teacher development and creating sustainable models of education by referring to the projects undertaken by QUEST Alliance in Bihar. Dr Madhuri Dubey anchored the session and conveyed the imperative need for exploring multiple approaches to education for a country as diverse and complex as India.