There are many reasons to promote entrepreneurship among young people since it has a number of potential benefits. An obvious and significant one is that it creates employment for the person owning the business. We should, however, accept that not all young people could become entrepreneurs in a business sense. It is therefore important to underline that entrepreneurial skills can help youth adapt well to other non-entrepreneurial careers. The improving social attitudes towards entrepreneurship are evident among young people.
Youth enterprise is not a new phenomenon and has existed for over 50 years at local national and international levels (e.g. Young Enterprise).
One possible way to address youth unemployment is to support young people in creating their own businesses. They have the interest and potential to become self-employed.
Young entrepreneurs face real barriers Young entrepreneurs face a variety of barriers:
Lack of awareness of the potential for entrepreneurship among role models results in a lack of encouragement or even negative social attitudes.
Education and training programs generally do not do enough to nurture entrepreneurial attitudes and skills.
Lack of prior work and entrepreneurship experience is a major determinant of business startup and entrepreneurship performance.
Fewer financial resources and difficulty obtaining external finance, including debt finance, hampers business start-up.
Limited business networks and business-related social capital have consequences for business start-up and obtaining legitimacy.
Market barriers, including a bias in financial markets away from supporting youth-owned businesses and ‘discrimination’ in product markets.
Keep in view the above-mentioned scenario, The NGO World organized a 02 Day workshop on “Youth Social Entrepreneurship” under its PATH program. 25 students/volunteers participated. Mr. Zafar Iqbal, Executive Director, The NGO World conducted the workshop. Firstly, he asked about the future planning of the youth. Mostly said that they will continue their education and then will try for a better job. Few of them shared that they will establish their own business.
Mr. Zafar Iqbal then shared the definition of youth, Entrepreneurship and Social entrepreneurship. He described these definitions in detail. Students took the deep interest in the session as it was very advantageous for them. They were very thankful to TNW for providing them an opportunity of the thoughtful session. Through this session, they got different ideas for being successful entrepreneurs.
