Thousands of young people learn outside in Bihar on Green Enterprise Internships, mid-pandemic

Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], March 23 (ANI/BusinessWire India): When their schools closed, thousands of young people in Bihar ventured outside to learn entrepreneurial and life skills on with sustainable entrepreneurs solving for Climate Change.

Now, they've made a TV show about it - Rough Cut, Get a Plan TV, premiers on Monday 21st March 2022 on Zee Bihar Jharkhand TV channel, Monday to Friday at 2.30 pm.

Rough Cut, Get a Plan TV, is a TV series made by young people in Bihar for young people who, mid-pandemic, ventured outdoors to learn outside in a Covid-19 safe environment, in the field with sustainable entrepreneurs. Young people completed back-to-back 21-day Green Enterprise Internships in everything from beekeeping to organic farming, solar engineering, and garbage management. They got hands-on work experience outside of what it means to run a sustainable enterprise on the front lines of Climate Change. Going to School, the creative not-for-profit education trust, with support from the IKEA Foundation and in cooperation with the Bihar Education Project Council (BEPC), designed and ran Green Enterprise Internships in Bihar in 10 districts to see if they could design an experiential green skills experience to equip young people with the skills, they need to solve for Climate Change, while schools were closed.

In an unpredictable world, being unreasonable can be a very good thing. Especially for young, start-up green enterprise entrepreneurs. Patience is a virtue they say, while sometimes good, it is a virtue that just might need to be updated to being impatient when the world is on fire when schools are submerged by monsoon floods. In a world of unpredictable weather, events, and everything else, being impatient, being unreasonable, is a very good thing.

With schools now re-opened, Green Enterprise Internships will continue with 'school outside', a proven model of being able to deliver uninterrupted green skills education, on-site, with sustainable entrepreneurs. Skills + Experience.

Kiran Kumari, State Program Officer, BEPC, says, "We might not be fully out of the pandemic, but when we were in it, we had to find a meaningful way to enable a lot of young people to learn sustainable skills - offline, in the field, experiential learning. Online education was always going to have limitations. We are not known for our stellar bandwidths anywhere in rural India, and so there was an opportunity, a chance if you will, to design to deliver a hands-on sustainable skills education outside with real entrepreneurs. We liked the idea; graphic novels being delivered to young people outside while they were completing beekeeping or organic farming internship. Tracking everything through an APP was a good innovation, it enabled us all to see the progress young people made and to realise, together, we can adapt as educational systems to deliver to young people, outside."

Vivek Singh, Head of Portfolio - Employment & Entrepreneurship at IKEA Foundation, says, "It's not always easy to communicate the concepts of green enterprise and green skills. By delivering sustainable enterprise skills in the field, as part of their green enterprise internships, Get A Plan has helpc ved young people find their own meanings for these concepts. This has inspired 35 young people to find local solutions to tackle climate change where they live by starting new enterprises. It's exciting to see that while the world was largely working from home, young people have been taking a risk to try something new."

Lisa Heydlauff, Founder and Director, Going to School, says, "The pandemic changed everything. We are called Going to School and suddenly, there were no schools. We had three things we could choose to put together. Graphic novels, outdoor skills experiences with entrepreneurs and a tracking APP, so we tried it, and it worked, giving us a space in between the pandemic and the next crisis, Climate Change, to design for the present tense and equip young people wherever they might be in Bihar, with the skills they need to break new ground with green enterprises that solve for Climate Change and create jobs for young people. We are grateful to have the support of epic partners, the IKEA Foundation and Government of Bihar, who supported us to take a risk."

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