IGNOU to educate and train BPL youths in six states

IGNOU will start a series of programmes early next year to educate and train youths from below poverty line families in tribal areas of six states.

After clearing the certificate or diploma courses, mostly on Information Technology, successful candidates will be given employment. While the certificate programmes are for six months each, the diploma courses will be for one year, IGNOU spokesman Surojit Mahalanobis said here.

The programmes will be conducted through a Common Service Centre (CSC) in each village panchayat of the six states - Orissa, MP, Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal.

All programmes will be carried out online from application to certification stages. For this, the process is on for hiring services of trained teachers from nearby areas to teach and guide the IGNOU students in every village panchayat, he said.

The pass-out students will be employed in various industries in East Zone of India. Initially, the programmes will be run from a hired house until the construction of the Regional Institute for Vocational Education and Training for East Zone (RIVET-EZ), gets completed and handed over to IGNOU.

The RIVET-EZ is part of development programmes of IGNOU through education and training to the grassroots. For the North East states, a RIVET-type IGNOU Institute of Vocational Education and Training (IIVET) is already functioning at Shillong, Meghalaya. Four more RIVETS will be set up soon for other zones of the country.