I Create's Program

I Create's Multi-Pronged Program

I Create has developed a successful Skill Based Entrepreneurship Training Program in partnership with the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE), New York, which has won several awards for its practical entrepreneurship curriculum. For the past seven years, I Create has trained disadvantaged women and youth to start their own micro and small businesses in India and provided employability skills to thousands of youth.

I Create equips women and youth with the practical knowledge and skills needed to start a business, generate income, and create employment for themselves and others. I Create’s unique curriculum combines opportunity recognition, sales, marketing, operations, distribution, accounting and cash flow management, as well as soft skills such as communication, networking for business, negotiation skills, interview skills, managing time and stress in start up situations. The program’s underlying assumption is that while it is natural to be risk-averse, almost every person has a latent flame for the excitement of entrepreneurship, which needs to be kindled through proper training, motivation and mentoring.

1. Entrepreneurship Training

• Training of Trainers (TOT): Leveraging Existing Institutions
Based primarily on the award winning entrepreneurship training program designed by I Create’s partner, NFTE, USA, I Create trains trainers from different school, colleges, ITI’s, NGO’s, and youth and women’s groups, to teach its unique program and interactive training methodology. This is a four and half day intensive training program.

• Erik Dauwen, IC-NFTE trainer from Belgium
The TOT is taught by an international faculty consisting of trainers from Belgium, USA and India. In the past 7 years, 690 trainers have been trained, many of them have now become IC Master Trainers.

• Entrepreneurship Awareness Programs (EAP)
I Create’s Master Trainers (MT’s) visit different educational institutions and youth and women’s groups to spread entrepreneurship awareness through its EAP sessions.

- • Aspiring Entrepreneurs Workshop (AEW)
- After the EAP, those youth, women and men interested in starting a small business, participate in the three-day intensive AEW’s taught by I Create trained Master Trainers.
- • Group Follow-up Sessions, (GFS)
- Group Follow-Up sessions are conducted by I Create and/or partner organizations to help Aspiring Entrepreneurs overcome roadblocks and to answer their questions. Since this is a group session, the participants learn from each other’s experiences as well.

• I Create Integrated Entrepreneurship Program Schematic

2. Reglonal And National Business Plan Competitions

In order to spread the culture of entrepreneurship, change the mindset of the students in low-income schools, college and ITI’s, who are usually trained to only look for jobs after graduation which are often not there for them, and to give them another option of starting their own small businesses, I Create holds regional business -plan competitions with cash awards. The winners go on to the I Create National Business Plan competition where the winners receive recognition and higher cash prizes and seed money to start a small business. In order to prepare for these competitions, the participating low-income educational institutions in the region teach a specially designed 40 period entrepreneurship training program to their students. Thus thousands of students compete on several levels: school, regional and national every year. This program has generated a high level of enthusiasm for entrepreneurship among the youth.

Merrill Lynch, one of the largest financial services companies in the world has sponsored the Entrepreneurship Education and Business Plan Competition at all the centers for the next three years.

3. Rural Projects

I Create has adopted selected villages in West Bengal, Rajasthan and
Karnataka. In Gujarat, IC has “adopted?a low-income urban area.

• ICWB Kolkata
Bagnan I - Population 1,91,188 Number of villages - 51
Bagnan II - Population 1,46,085 Number of villages - 96.

• ICR Jaipur
Palri Meena: 2,500 families relocated. Population: 25,000
Jagga Ki Bawari: Population over 20,000

• ICG Baroda
Navayard : Population 50,000

• ICVK Bangalore
Villages in Kanakpura district,
Karnataka, Kadasikoppa village: 20000
Honnaganahalli village:15000

Village schools adopted:
Kadasikoppa High School:163
Honnaganahalli High School:263

• Empowerment of Women through Entrepreneurship (EWE) Program
This is the cornerstone of all rural programs. The rural women participate in the EAS, AEW and GF programs. The training program is followed by skills training and seed money loan to the deserving women.

In India, the status of women is generally low and they are sometimes mistreated by the men and older women in the family. This is particularly so because of their total economic dependence upon others. A woman who contributes to the family finances has a greater say in how her children, particularly her daughters, are to be raised and is able to provide better nutrition and education to her children. She becomes a role model not only to her daughter but also to other young women. When we empower one woman, we empower her entire future generations.

• Entrepreneurship Training in Schools
Entrepreneurship classes are conducted daily in selected low income High Schools to foster interest in entrepreneurship at an early age. In addition, when these students pass High School, and if they are unable to get jobs, they would have already acquired the basics of entrepreneurship and would therefore have an option of starting their own small business instead of joining the ranks of the rural unemployed or migrate to the cities to become day laborers or the urban poor.

- • Nutritious Mid-Day meals or nutritious snacks and milk for High School Students
- Rural students walk great distances to their High School often without breakfast. Some children do not bring lunch either. It is with this in view that IC started providing mid-day meals or nutritious snack and milk to children in those High Schools where IC trained teachers teach entrepreneurship courses.

4. Some Special Intiatives

• Health Project in Gujarat
A pilot health project for women has begun in Navayard to bolster the ability of the women trained to engage in their enterprises by helping them keep good health. This project has been started by I Create in memory of late Sister Lillian an I C Master trainer who had been enthusiastically promoting entrepreneurship in various communities for women's economic empowerment.

- • Seed Money Fund in West Bengal
- I Create created a Seed Money Fund in Bagnan in memory of one of its finest Master Trainers, Chitrarup Chakraborty. Chitrarup Fund has already been put to use for purchase of equipment for a handloom project for women trained in entrepreneurship in Bagnan village. 15 girls are involved in the handloom weaving project . The new loom will be available exclusively for these 15 women. Several other needy women have been given low interest loans to start their own small businesses.

• Seed money programs in IC Rajasthan and IC Gujarat
Selected women who have successfully completed the IC AEW are given low interest loans to start small enterprises of their own.

• Entrepreneurship for Harmony
An important component of our IC Gujarat project is Entrepreneurship for Harmony.
One of our goals is to work with minorities to train them to starting their own enterprises and not depend on jobs, which are often too difficult to find and promote harmony through economic prosperity and community engagement.

• Other affiliations: We are proud to have partnered with
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- The Sehgal Foundation in the Income Enhancement program component of its highly remarkable Integrated, Sustainable Village Development (ISVD) program in the villages of Harayana.
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- The Kherwadi Social Welfare Association, which is a 79 year old NGO that has been working in the slums of Bandra (E) and Khar (E), has been actively involved in the relief and rehabilitation work of the people affected, not only in Bandra (E), but also in Jogeshwari (E), which is the location of one of the Outreach Centers, for Vocational and now entrepreneurship training and spreading its wonderful program to other places of need.
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- Youth Employment Summit, a world wide youth services,
  The YES Campaign is to develop capacity of youth to lead in-country youth employment initiatives. It was launched by delegates from 120 countries at the Youth Employment Summit, in Egypt in 2002.
  The Summit was co-chaired by H.E. Mrs. Suzanne Mubarak, First Lady of Egypt and Hon. William J. Clinton, the 42nd President of the United States.
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- I Create has participated in promoting entrepreneurship training as a means to create jobs among the disadvantaged at conferences held in different places including the GOPIO conference in New York in 2003 and by US Indian American Chamber of Commerce in 2006 and 2007.

5. Program Cost

As a result of pro bono services provided by its current management and as a result of leveraging existing organizations, the average cost of basic training comes to $37 per person. This compares very favorably to an average cost of $493 to $638 per trainee in Europe, and close to $370 per trainee in the US.