First global entrepreneur education meet in SA elevates Sri Lanka to influential UNESCO-APEID Chair
Apioneering Entrepreneurship Education (EE) series by UNESCO that successfully concluded in Colombo recently has elevated Sri Lanka as the new Chair of prestigious UNESCO-APEID EE series, making it the first South Asian country to clinch this Chair.
More importantly, a landmark international declaration –seen also as a historic first for Sri Lanka’s Eastern Province-made in Trincomalee on October 9 by delegates from 21 countries, has now become key initiative in global Entrepreneur Education (EE) reforms.
“I commend all the participants for announcing and commencing work on the ‘Trincomalee Declaration on Entrepreneurship Education’. The UNESCO-APEID meeting was held for the first time in South Asia. I thank UNESCO Bangkok for bringing this series to Sri Lanka. As the Minister in-charge of Lankan entrepreneurship and SMES, my focus is to promote these sectors and reduce the burden on public funds,” said Industry and Commerce Minister Rishad Bathiudeen.
Minister Bathiudeen, joined by Chief of Section for Educational Innovation and Skills Developmentunesco Bangkok Office Libing Wang, was addressing a press briefing at JAIC Hilton, Colombo on the successful completion of seventh UNESCO-APEID meeting on Entrepreneurship Education that began on 9 October in Trincomalee and concluded in Colombo JAIC on the same day.
SME and entrepreneurial development experts from 21 countries from government, education institutions, academia, private sector organizations and students themselves were among the participants at the three day multi-stakeholder sessions themed ‘Leveraging multi-stakeholder engagement to nurture future entrepreneurs.’
The milestone event was hosted by the National Enterprise Development Agency (NEDA) and convened by UNESCO Bangkok. Sri Lanka earns the honour of being the first South Asian country to host the UNESCOAPEID global series.
As a result of the successful completion of this three-day meeting, Sri Lanka has been elevated to the UNESCO-APIED Chair until Hong Kong or Brunei takes over next year. Sri Lanka shall now be spearheading the facilitation of a multi-stakeholder education reform initiative through NEDA of Industry and Commerce Ministry, until Hong Kong or Brunei shall take over next year.
The Sri Lankan meetings resulted in the first International Declaration on EE at multiple levels, which focuses on secondary, tertiary and at Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET). Called the ‘Trincomalee Declaration on Entrepreneurship Education’ it will address the importance of entrepreneurship education and integrate it to a wide array of secondary, tertiary and TVET level institutions in Asia- Pacific.
This ‘Trincomalee Declaration’ is also the first declaration of global scope ever to emerge from the Eastern Province of Sri Lanka. Launching the UNESCOAPEID event at Navy Auditorium in Trincomalee on 9 October was the Governor of Eastern Province Rohitha Bogollagama.
“Entrepreneurship is the subject through which we can link education and industry” said Governor Bogollagama, and added: “Education and human capital are needed for a student to grow to be an entrepreneur. Lots of Lankan entrepreneurs were not the best of students and they languished in (traditional) academics -but turned out to be the best entrepreneurs in Sri Lanka and in the world despite this.”
The first draft of the Trincomalee Declaration is expected to be made available within the coming weeks and NEDA Sri Lanka is to activate it towards the domestic stakeholders.