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In what happened to be one of the rarest occasions of my life, I had a direct encounter with Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer, the Honorable Minister of Sports & Youth Development. Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer was invited as the chief guest of an inauguration ceremony organized by Smile Foundation India.

The ceremony was organized to launch Smile's Twin e-learning program at the national level. The Twin e-learning project aims at preparing urban under-privileged (adolescent youths) with skills in English Proficiency, Basic Computing and Life Skills for enhancing their prospect of employment in fast expanding emerging sectors like retail outlets, hospitality and BPOs.

Students of IMI were closely associated with Smile Foundation during the development stage of this project and are still attached with the organization for customizing the training module according to the specific requirements of the potential recruiters which include Reliance Retail, KFC and Pizza Hut, to name a few. The course curriculum to be used to train the youngsters has been indigenously developed by students of IMI-PGPHRM Batch of 2008.

The inauguration ceremony was a part of two days meet between the various partners of Smile including NGOs from different states, government organizations, industrial partners and, of course, IMI (represented by me). The main agenda of the meeting was to discuss and develop a roadmap for the implementation of the project. On Day One, various NGO partners of Smile sat together and discussed about ways to garner mutual support for making the project a reality. On Day Two, Smile Foundation and its confederation of NGOs sat directly across Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer and the industrial partners and shared there expectations from each other in context of the project.

Mr. Mani Shankar Aiyer congratulated Smile Foundation for successful implementation of the project in 39 centers across the country. He was all praises for Smile Foundation for its well-timed initiative. He assured Smile Foundation of all the help required from all three ministries headed by him namely the Youth and Sports Ministry, the Ministry of Panchayati Raj and the Ministry of Development of North East States.

Mr. Aiyer further emphasized that youth development is the crux of national development. Quoting facts from the World Bank report, he said that 40% of the GDP growth rated in the South Asian nations like Malaysia, Japan and Indonesia is dependent on the youth population.

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* Contributed by -
Amit Barui,
PGDM-HR (2006-08),
IMI, Delhi.