New Delhi, Aug 19 (Inditop.com) The country’s premier long distance education varsity, the Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has collaborated with nearly a dozen universities in as many countries to develop skills among 10 million rural people in the next six years.
“The aim is to make rural people skilled. We will try to bridge the digital divide among people and thus empower them,” IGNOU Vice Chancellor V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai told IANS Wednesday.
The skill development would be region specific and will be facilitated through tele-centres across the countries, including Uganda, Hungary, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Thailand and the Philippines.
The skill development would be done in local language and efforts are on to develop a global curriculum for this.
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC), a Canadian organisation, is collaborating with the IGNOU for the purpose.
B. Shadrach, a senior official of the IDRC, said: “The skill development has four areas – soft skill, management skill, private and public service and computer training.”
Also as part of the Bharat Nirman (Building India) programme, India is setting up over 100,000 tele-centres to facilitate information to people about several government schemes and opportunities.
“These centres will be utilized to help rural people to develop employable skills,” Pillai said.
They will be empowered in areas like agriculture, fisheries, handicrafts and other vocational skills which are source of income for people in their own region. There will be hundreds of disciplines. “It will educate and empower them. Education will lead to better livelihood and here we all will feel happy,” he said.
The IGNOU is the world’s largest open university with a student enrolment of at least 2.5 million.
