New Delhi: Atal Innovation Mission (AIM), NITI Aayog in collaboration with UNDP, India today launched the Community Innovator Fellowship (CIF) marking the “International Day of Women & Girls in Science”.
AIM also released the operations manual for establishing an Atal Community Innovation Centres (ACIC) ecosystem. The manual is a knowledge and capacity building framework, which shall support the foundational and operational functioning of an ACIC. The manual focuses on creation of pillars that play an important role in designing and establishing a support system to develop a holistic innovation ecosystem.
The fellowship is developed as a pre-incubation model which will provide youth with an opportunity to establish their social enterprise focusing on Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) based solutions for solving community issues.
This is going to be a one-year-long intensive fellowship program which has been designed for an aspiring community innovator irrespective of their socio-economic background. During the course of this fellowship, each fellow will be hosted at one of the AIM’s ACICs and shall acquire SDG awareness, entrepreneurial skills and life skills while they are working on their idea. The ACICs would nurture youth-led innovations by providing suitable resources in terms of operating facilities, co-working space, maker labs and a dynamic business network to the innovator.
ACICs have been established with a focus to develop the start-up and innovation ecosystem in the underserved regions of the country. Currently, there are 12 ACICs across 9 states in the country and the target is to establish 50 such centres in the country.
Through the ACICs, the fellowship will propel the journey of an innovator from ideating to commercialising via a focused one-year model. The CIF Program will focus on facilitating knowledge and capacity building among aspiring community innovators essential to their entrepreneurship journey. This is one of the ways with which AIM shall try and achieve participation of youth in mainstreaming social enterprise as a culture in the start-up ecosystem as well as promoting womenpreneurs from different regions in India.
Addressing the launch event Vice Chairman NITI Aayog Dr. Rajiv Kumar said, “This fellowship is a year-long program that aims to provide young community innovators necessary infrastructure and knowledge building in their entrepreneurial journey. This is a propelling initiative to harness the creativity and the innovation potential that grassroots of India hold.”
UNDP Resident Representative in India Shoko Noda said, “Through this fellowship initiative, we are inviting the youth to find their own solutions to create enterprises that become sustainable business models. AIM and UNDP are determined to work together with government, civil society and private sector to make this happen.”
– global bihari bureau
