The Na­tion­al En­er­gy Skills Cen­tre (NESC) and NED­CO have signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MoU) yes­ter­day, which will see NESC stu­dents re­ceive en­tre­pre­neur­ial train­ing and sup­port from NED­CO.

The MoU fol­lows the launch of the NESC Cen­tre for En­tre­pre­neur­ship (CFE) in Au­gust. CFE is an NESC ini­tia­tive de­signed to pro­vide as­sis­tance, guid­ance and sup­port to NESC stu­dents with ideas on how to start their own busi­ness­es.

Ac­cord­ing the NESC, the MoU will bol­ster this ini­tia­tive by pro­vid­ing even greater sup­port to young en­tre­pre­neurs through NED­CO’s Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme.

NESC said in a re­lease an­nounc­ing the MOU, “With this fo­cus on en­tre­pre­neur­ship train­ing, NESC stu­dents and grad­u­ates can think be­yond em­ploy­ment to them­selves be­com­ing em­ploy­ers and con­trac­tors. En­tre­pre­neur­ial stu­dents will have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to test their busi­ness ideas, learn busi­ness-build­ing skills, de­vel­op their net­works and net­work­ing skills, re­ceive men­tor­ship from es­tab­lished en­tre­pre­neurs and ac­cess the fund­ing they need to start their busi­ness op­er­a­tions.”

NED­CO’s CEO Calvin Mau­rice said each pro­tégé will get in­di­vid­ual at­ten­tion and men­tor­ship through the pro­gramme.

He said dur­ing the MoU sign­ing cer­e­mo­ny at NESC’s Head Of­fice in Pt Lisas. “The Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme pro­vides a par­tic­u­lar fa­cil­i­ty that is dif­fer­ent from the nor­mal NED­CO arrange­ments; these pro­tégées will be able to ac­cess fund­ing with less col­lat­er­al to se­cure their suc­cess in busi­ness.”

NESC pres­i­dent Kern Dass added, “Gone are the days when you could count on a per­ma­nent job and a sin­gle stream of in­come for life. We are thrilled to be able to part­ner with NED­CO to of­fer this amaz­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty to our stu­dents, so that they could em­ploy them­selves and oth­ers.”

Dass ex­plained the MOU grant­ed fur­ther op­por­tu­ni­ties to stu­dents who pur­sue NESC’s GATE-Ap­proved diplo­mas which have tra­di­tion­al­ly fo­cused on the train­ing of skilled trades­men and women. The NESC said many of their trainees have gone on to have suc­cess­ful ca­reers in the en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al sec­tors with some con­tract­ing busi­ness­es that ser­vice larg­er en­er­gy and in­dus­tri­al com­pa­nies, both lo­cal­ly and abroad.

“Many stu­dents come to the NESC with big dreams. Now, in ad­di­tion to pro­vid­ing world-class tech­ni­cal skills train­ing, we are able to pro­vide them with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn how to op­er­ate and grow a sus­tain­able busi­ness that pos­i­tive­ly im­pacts the econ­o­my in their com­mu­ni­ty and be­yond,” said Dass.

The Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment (MPD), un­der the Pub­lic Sec­tor In­vest­ment Pro­gramme (PSIP) al­lo­cat­ed fund­ing for NED­CO’s Busi­ness Ac­cel­er­a­tor Pro­gramme in 2019. As state-fund­ed in­sti­tu­tions, both the NESC and NED­CO look for­ward to work­ing to­geth­er to ac­cel­er­ate lo­cal small and mi­cro en­ter­pris­es in the op­er­a­tion of com­mer­cial busi­ness.