Srinagar: Chinar International, a social impact organization working for children and youth, concluded a 4-day Small Business Support (SBS) program in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) at Sangarmaal City Centre, Srinagar by selecting twenty young entrepreneurs to the cohort – III of the program.
On the first three days of the program, a total of forty finalist candidates presented their ideas to the panel of experts. The presentations were accompanied with motivational speeches from young entrepreneurs of the Valley like Rayees Ahmed (Tiffin Aaw), Mariya Reshi (Pride by Mariya Reshi), Shiekh Samiullah (Fastbeetle). Inspiring speeches were also given by successful business owners from cohort I and II of SBS program like Zahida, Ramzan Kar and Dilawer from Baramulla, Kupwara and Bandipora respectively.
The felicitation ceremony of the top twenty was held on 22 September. Irfan Shahmiri (Global Executive Director CHINAR International), Dr. Mushtaq Margoob a renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Zahida Shah and Ismet Shahmiri were among those who attended the felicitation ceremony. Post felicitation a training and capacity-building program was conducted for selected candidates by TISS faculty of Prof Satyajit Majumdar and Sujay Dixit.
The SBS cohort – III will support twenty businesses with a start-up support of up to 1.5 lakh per unit besides technical, marketing, accounting guidance, and training. A total of 260 applicants had applied for the program from all the districts of the Kashmir division, out of which forty got shortlisted for the final round. After the idea presentation, the distribution of the twenty successful candidates from different districts was as following: Baramulla (3), Bandipora (3), Srinagar (2), Kulgam (1), Kupwara (3), Budgam (4), Shopian (2) and Pulwama (2).
The goal of SBS program is to support youth coming from low-income families to become self-reliant. The knowledge partner of the project is Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS), Mumbai. The panelists of the event were Prof. Satyajit Majumdar, Dean of School of Management and Labour studies at TISS, Sujay Dixit- Vice President (Incubation and Excellence) at TISS, Prof. Saad Parvez- Associate Professor at NIT Srinagar, Shazia Manzoor- (HOD, Department of Social work, Kashmir University), Abdul Rouf Khan (JKEDI). All panelists hold expertise and vast experience in the field of innovation, incubation and social entrepreneurship.
It is pertinent to mention that the organisation supported twenty candidates last year under the same project who are successfully running their units today.__GK News
