Mission

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. 

Objectives

      1. To Provide Integrated Entrepreneurship Training and Creating Entrepreneurs as a solution to the pervasive unemployment problem
      2. To provide practical business skills for employability.

Interventions

     1. Training of Trainers: 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.

     2. 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.

     3. Aspiring Entrepreneurs Workshop: 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.

     4. Group Follow-up Sessions: 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.

     5. Regional and National Business Plan Competitions:  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.

     6. Empowerment of Women through Entrepreneurship (EWE) Program; 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.

     7. Entrepreneurship 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.

ILO Expertise

Enterprise development

Partners

The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship

Funding

Merril Lynch
Bankworld
American Indian Foundation
AT&T
The Sehgal Foundation
Rajasthan Education Trust
Share & Care Foundation