Ammachi Labs’ Women Empowerment (WE) project (funded in part by United Nations Democracy Fund), organized a 5 day “Training the Trainers” Course (TTT) at Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham Campus from November 19th- 23rd, 2013. This was the third TTT program that has been held, and the focus was on ‘Entrepreneurship’.

The WE Project has recently finished the training of more than 3,000 beneficiaries. These women are at a turning point where most of those them will be starting their entrepreneurial journey with new Self Help Groups (SHGs) being formed. So Ammachi Labs invited one of the best expert groups in India, I Create, Bangalore, which gives economic empowerment to underprivileged members of our society through integrated grassroots entrepreneurship development and mentoring.

The workshop was for the facilitators along with a student nominee from each center. About 35 women from the centers participated. The sessions covered were aimed at attendees transferring knowledge acquired from the sessions to other beneficiaries. The topics covered were Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Cash Inflow and Outflow, Essential steps of Idea Generation, How to calculate Start up cost, Fixed and Variable Cost along with Profit and Loss account and Breakeven point.

The highlight of the workshop being the delivery of above mentioned topic in the simplest form possible, mostly through role playing and activities instead of lectures and theory classes. On the final day of the TTT Program, a Business Plan Competition was held. The Judges of the competition were Mrs. Saraswati Amma (Manager,Bank of India), Mr.K.P Radhakrishnan (Retd. Dy. Director of District Industries Centre) & Mr. Ulhas Kamat – (CEO-I Create).

The Guest of Honour for the valedictory function was Mr. M.P. Joseph (Additional Chief Secretary, Advisor to Minister for Labour, Kerala).Addressing the participants, he said that business is like giving birth to a child so it is very important to understand the difficulties that one may face and plan for them properly.

Upon receiving their certificates, some of the participants spoke and gave their feedback on the TTT Program. Ms. Ganga from Tamil Nadu said “I Create helped a lot to get a clear picture on how to start a business and what are the things we need to keep in mind before the start of a business”. She said based on this training she will become a successful Entrepreneur. The other participant Ms. Dhanya from Evoor said “Before this training my group including me had put up stalls in many exhibitions but were not successful in doing business so after going through this training session came to know where we went wrong. So today I feel very confident and happy that I have learnt many useful points from this session and will become a successful entrepreneur in future”.

December 17, 2013
Amritapuri