Union Minister for Education and Skill Development inaugurates phase-II of Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship

Mr Dharmendra Pradhan, Union Minister for Education, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, launched the Mahatma Gandhi National Fellowship Phase II, a two-year fellowship designed to provide opportunities for young, dynamic individuals to contribute to improving skill development at the grassroots level.

The two-year fellowship aims to combine classroom sessions with extensive field immersion at the district level in order to establish realistic strategies and identify hurdles to increasing employment, economic output, and promoting livelihoods in rural areas.

Mr Pradhan, addressing at the event, urged fellows to drive skill development activities as catalysts for social change at the grassroots level. He also urged district collectors and academic partners such as IIMs to assist the fellows and write a success storey of change through the fellowship.

We are heading towards an Aatmanirbhar Bharat, he remarked, under Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s leadership. Massive shifts across sectors will necessitate the creation of new skills and more skilled professionals, he continued, which necessitates skill mapping at the district level and directing skill development activities accordingly.

Minister Pradhan urged the fellows to work with global thinking and a local approach, including incorporating local language into skill development activities, in order to meet the needs of the twenty-first century and local realities.

Speaking about the National Education Policy 2020, Shri Pradhan outlined the vision to create strong convergence between education and skills and recent initiatives in this direction including the Academic Bank of Credit. He called upon the IIMs to make the fellows aware of the National Education Policy.

Under MGNF Phase-I, 69 Fellows have been deployed in 69 districts across six states, with IIM Bangalore as the academic partner.

Also read: MGNF – Decoding district level skilling and entrepreneurship https://nationalskillsnetwork.in/oldsite/mgnf-decoding-district-level-skilling-and-entrepreneurship/

MGNF is a chance for young women and men between the ages of 21 and 30 who have some level of academic or professional knowledge to provide catalytic support to the district administration in order to improve the delivery of skill development programmes.