Summary
Under the agreement, the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), the sub scheme of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), will focus on promoting employment opportunities in rural India, particularly developing self-employment avenues for unemployed rural people
This will be accomplished through the use of integrated ICT techniques and tools for training, capacity building, business advisory services, and the provision of loans from banks, SHGs, and federations
The Indian Institute of Entrepreneurship (IIE) under the aegis of Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship (MSDE) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) to promote entrepreneurship at a local level among the rural youth.
Under the agreement, the Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP), the sub scheme of the National Rural Livelihoods Mission (NRLM), will focus on promoting employment opportunities in rural India, particularly developing self-employment avenues for unemployed rural people.
By developing a sustainable model for village entrepreneurship promotion, the programme aims to enable the rural poor from the self-help group (SHG) ecosystem to start their own businesses. This will be accomplished through the use of integrated ICT techniques and tools for training, capacity building, business advisory services, and the provision of loans from banks, SHGs, and federations.
Lalit Sharma, director of IIE, and Raghvendra Pratap Singh, director of MoRD, signed the MoU in the presence of Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary, MSDE, Anuradha Vemuri, joint secretary, MSDE, and Charanjit Singh, joint secretary MoRD.
IIE, Guwahati, Assam, will act as a National Resource Organisation (NRO) for the SVEP and will provide support to the State Rural Livelihoods Mission (SRLM) for the scheme’s successful implementation. The NRO is expected to play a two-fold role in the SVEP’s implementation – implementation role and programme scale-up role.
Implementation role will include direct SVEP implementation in the blocks as implementing partners with the states, while programme scale-up role will focus on scaling up the scheme based on the blocks’ experience with the SVEP and their prior experience with entrepreneurship development programmes.
Rajesh Aggarwal, secretary, Ministry of Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, said, “The Start-up Village Entrepreneurship Programme (SVEP) being implemented by the IIE is a great way to empower the youth of rural India with the relevant skill sets and promote entrepreneurship at local level. With the experience that IIE has, we will ensure strong implementation mechanisms and handholding support to State Rural Livelihoods Missions (SRLMs) implementing SVEP. We are certain that this will further boost the employment opportunities in rural India with a step in the direction of Atmanirbhar Bharat.”
The main objective of SVEP is to develop local resources by training a pool of village level cadre of community resource persons-enterprise promotion (CRP-EP) and build the capacity of the NRLM and SHG federations to monitor, direct the work of the CRPEPs.
IIE will work closely with SRLMs to serve as the SVEP’s national resource organisation. IIE and the respective SRLM will be in charge of allocating SVEP blocks for implementation.
Last updated on 25 Mar 2022
