EQUIPPING THE COLLEGE YOUTH ACROSS KHYBER PAKHTUNKHWA, WITH REQUISITE SKILLS FOR ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND CAREER COUNSELLING

Pakistan has one of the largest youth populations in the world. A substantial percentage falls within the age group of 15 to 20, making it a youthful nation. The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is also characterized by a "youth bulge" whereby a disproportionately large population of young people, typically between the ages of 15 and 29, is present. The province's colleges remain the launch pad for these boys and girls to make crucial decisions regarding their further education, leading to their choices of careers. However, the focus remains mostly academic with the young students having negligible understanding of the vast array of career choices that can be accessed by making the right decisions regarding their educational pathways beyond college. Besides challenges in choosing career choices, the youth have little to no knowledge of opportunities that Entrepreneurship can provide them. Many of them have ideas but do not know how to make them useful or even what to do with them.

The Government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) is initiating an instant project that aims at empowering the youth of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, primarily students of intermediate (Schools) and degree colleges, with the necessary means to learn about Entrepreneurship and the opportunities it provides. One of the primary objectives is to promote entrepreneurship in the region by developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa by nurturing young minds to acquire entrepreneurship as a career by acquiring skills that will create jobs and strengthen the local economy. Secondly, keeping in view the future job challenges, the Government of KP aims to provide its youth – from degree colleges and schools with inter-education – career counselling sessions to better equip them for future challenges. The main focus of this particular initiative is to provide awareness and guidance to these students on choosing professions and careers that are going to be in high demand shortly. The Directorate of Youth Affairs, Government of KP will execute the project through a well-reputed implementing partner organization of the province.

Project Objectives

• To equip the youth of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa with the requisite knowledge and skills for entrepreneurship and development of viable business model(s).
• To provide career counselling to youth on trends and skills to equip them for future challenges in a highly job-competitive environment and facilitate them in their first career choices.

Project Execution Strategy

There are around 230 select colleges and schools with inter-education, spread all across the province. The students from all the colleges and schools with inter education, will be accessed and be provided awareness seminars on entrepreneurship. To make it sustainable, the principals and selected faculty members from these colleges will also be included in these training sessions.

In the first phase, the implementing partner university/institution will select 20 partner universities from KP to cover such a vast geographical spread of colleges and HSSCs. The leading university/institution will first train 60 faculty members of the partnering universities (3 from each university) on training content and methodology to maintain an equal quality of training for all the colleges. In this regard, a comprehensive three-day Training of Trainers (ToT) will be conducted through the leading University/Institution.

In the second phase, the trained faculty members from partner universities will conduct a comprehensive two-day training of students in each of the 230 Colleges/inter-schools on “Entrepreneurship” and “Career Counseling”. During the training, the student groups will be encouraged to develop a simple project plan and submit it through an online portal. The resource persons will evaluate those plans from their respective colleges and select a total of 200 ideas. Finally, the 200 shortlisted ideas will then be submitted to the leading partner university/institution for final scrutiny of ideas by experts. A panel of experts from academia and industry will select the best business ideas, one at least from each district of KP. In total, 36 ideas/students will awarded a reward money of 100,000 PKR.