‘Opening Ceremony of Workshop - Empowering through Cooperative Entrepreneurship’

 

 

Opening Ceremony of Workshop

Empowering through Cooperative Entrepreneurship

Venue : UTM, La Tour Koenig   Date: Thursday 24 April at 10.00 a.m

Mr Seechurn, Director of National Institute for Co-operative Entrepreneurship

Dear participants,

I wish to thank the National Institute for Co-operative Entrepreneurship  for the organization of this workshop aimed at creating awareness of university students on the concept, importance and potential of cooperative entrepreneurship  and motivate them to consider the cooperative approach as an alternative way of becoming entrepreneurs.

I thank the Ministry of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives for this initiative in our universities.

Universities and higher education institutions can contribute positively and significantly to innovative and growth-oriented entrepreneurship. They can teach entrepreneurship and transfer knowledge and innovation to enterprises. There is a need to develop entrepreneurship engagement  and  expand existing entrepreneurship efforts and introduce more creative and effective approaches, building on the best practices highlighted from around the world. entrepreneurship education is that it has the potential to encourage entrepreneurship, fostering the right mindset among students as well as providing them with relevant entrepreneurial skills. This will in time have a positive impact on future economic growth, job creation, innovation and wealth generation. Moreover, entrepreneurial skills and attitudes also provide benefits to society beyond their application to business activity.

UNESCO reports that in its latest national policy framework introduced in 2010,  the Chinese Ministry of Education required that creativity and entrepreneurship education should be integrated into different aspects of institutional reforms within higher education institutions, including redefinition of the missions of higher education institutions, reforms of teaching modalities and curriculum systems, capacity building of teaching staff, promotion of creativity and entrepreneurship through different kinds of extracurricular activities, establishment of relevant monitoring mechanism, collection of best practices for information and experience sharing. Secondly, in order to provide supportive platforms for the students to engage in entrepreneurial activities, central and local partnerships in the establishment of entrepreneurship education bases are encouraged, with existing university science parks and incubation centres playing important roles. Thirdly, provincial education authorities are required to provide more favourable policies for university graduates to create their own business plans and start new ventures.

We want all the universities to focus not only on the examinations and diplomas but on creating innovation and building new ideas. In USA, we know that most of the students following courses at the Harvard Business School end up starting their own business and become successful entrepreneurs.

We have started Business incubators with the Mauritius Research Council on a small scale and hope to expand this project in the future. The Institut Francophone de l’Entrepreunariat is working on a virtual incubator to promote entrepreneurship.

I therefore wish to thank the Ministry of Business, Enterprise and Cooperatives and the  National Institute for Co-operative Entrepreneurship for sensitizing students on entrepreneurship through cooperatives. We should develop a common framework to promote entrepreneurship among our students and work together for the implementation of the framework.

Thank you.