The enthusiasm among women entrepreneurs in upgrading their IT skills for business development was evident at the recent MoU signing ceremony of the FICCI Ladies’ Organisation (FLO) with the NIIT Foundation. The MoU’s objective is to design and conduct training programmes exclusively for women entrepreneurs, professionals and potential entrepreneurs. Besides the members, the MoU will also cover training programmes for underprivileged women.
The formal signing of the MoU took place at FICCI between FLO President Harjinder Kaur Talwar and Vijay K Thadani, Co-Founder and Managing Director, NIIT.
According to the MoU, the FLO and NIIT Foundation will host workshops to enhance skills of women entrepreneurs with digital and financial literacy, besides IT skills, to include technology in their work and generate new entrepreneurial ideas. These workshops will be organised pan-India across four zones — East, West, North and South — and all 16 chapters of FLO. As a key initiative for underprivileged women, the NIIT Foundation will impart courses in IT/ITeS to build their IT skills and job readiness training for employability.
Harjinder Talwar said, “In the current digital age, subsistence for any individual is next to impossible without digital literacy. At the same time, management of finances is crucial for any individual. These two are primary necessities, whether in daily life, or business. The NIIT Foundation has been in the forefront, positively impacting the underprivileged of the country through its education and skill training initiatives, leading to employability since 2004.”
She added, “FLO believes women’s resources and strengths need to be channelled to help them achieve their full potential and, therefore, looks at holistic development of women. We also believe it’s mandatory to activate women’s participation in the nation’s development. In this, training and development present prime opportunities to expand knowledge base. It also prepares women at all stages of their business and careers and aligns them with the most relevant competencies.”
Why this MoU
- With this MoU, the FLO and NIIT Foundation aims at providing the members with new skill sets and helping them hone their existing ones
- The training programmes for underprivileged girls aim at training them in industry-aligned courses so that they can find jobs after completion of training and generate livelihood for themselves and grow their family income
Key takeaways from the training programmes
- Introduction to, and operation of, digital devices
- Introduction to the Internet and its applications; communicating through Internet
- Introduction to income and expenditure, focusing on savings and basic banking
- Mobile accounts/wallets
- Wise borrowing, investments, managing risks with insurance
- Introduction to financial planning, creating a financial plan, supporting resources
- To enable potential entrepreneurs develop concrete business ideas
