Teach Youths To Build Businesses - AYEN

By Sharifah Pirdaus Syed Ali and Resemarie Khoo Mohd Sani KUALA LUMPUR, Sept 22 (Bernama) -- Malaysian youths need to be equipped with entrepreneurial skills to enable them to start their own businesses regardless whether they gain employment or not, the Asian Youth Entrepreneurs Network (AYEN) said. Its founder, Dr Marceline Girol said jobs were hard to come by as a study showed that only about 40 per cent of youths would gain employment this year. "What will happen to the rest (of them)? We should nurture them to become junior entrepreneurs to earn their living, while creating more jobs. "Even for youths who are working, the entrepreneurial skills can still be taught while they were pursuing their career. "We must continue to provide knowledge and instill business sense into them so that in whatever field they endeavour, they will be able to sell their ideas, products and services to generate income," she told Bernama on the sidelines of the 5th Asia Content Business Summit (ACBS) in conjunction with KL Converge! 2016. Girol said the Malaysian Education Blueprint was also moving towards preparing students to become job creators from job seekers as full employment could not be reached in two to three years' time. "Hence, nurturing young entrepreneurs is really what is needed now. Malaysia has a lot of talents in various fields like fashion, engineering, content creation, bio-science, and food and beverages, but they will not be able to sell their ideas unless they acquire the right marketing skills," she said. She said universities should adopt junior enterprise concept in their curriculum as this would expose students to entrepreneurial skills in the real market, develop entrepreneurial mindset and expand their personal network. Girol said in a junior enterprise, youths could afford to make mistakes as part of the learning curve to learn and manage their company efficiently, thus preparing them to face the real business world. Earlier, at the ACBS event, Girol said AYEN is inviting all film schools from 15 Asian countries to participate in a student documentary film competition themed "My Sustainable Country" with US$10,000 in prize money up for grab. The competition is aimed at nurturing film students on every aspect of the production process, with AYEN assisting them in mentoring and consultation by bridging them with the experts whenever they face difficulties. Based in Kuala Lumpur, AYEN seeks to establish a network of junior enterprises (JEs) across Asia with the aim of developing Asia into a hub of young entrepreneurs. This can be achieved by being a platform to help university students to form JEs within their campuses in order to provide them with a holistic experience, while pursuing their studies. --BERNAMA