NIBONG TEBAL, Sept 26 — The Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) is in the midst of empowering and improving the social entrepreneurship programme known as Social Enterprise @ Community (SE@C) in an effort to produce more social entrepreneurs among polytechnic and community college students.
Its Deputy Minister Datuk Mansor Othman said through the programme, students will experience working with industry players while helping the community.
“Actually, this programme has been implemented for the past few years, but since last month, we began to strengthen it because the government intends to produce holistic graduates with entrepreneurial skills and who can generate jobs for the community.
“This programme is also part of the government’s effort to help increase the income and skills of the asnaf group, single mothers, unemployed youths, the urban poor or the B40, through the transfer of knowledge and skills from polytechnics or community colleges,” he told reporters here today.
He was met after officiating the Bakti Siswa Polycc @ Komuniti 2020 community service programme at SMK Sungai Acheh, here. Senior Academic director of MOHE’s Polytechnic and Community College Education Department Dr Mohd Rashahidi @ Rusdi Mahamood was also present.
Mansor, who is also Nibong Tebal MP said in the first phase of the SE@C programme, students will be placed in foster homes, where they will share knowledge and work with the families concerned to produce products for the community and commercialise the business.
“Based on my work visits to polytechnics and community colleges, I found that they (students there) produce a lot of products, but they are not commercialised as many do not know about it, so I believe through this SE@C programme their products can get greater mileage and even benefit the community,” he said.
Apart from that, he said it was estimated that about 330,000 prospective graduates would face challenges in securing a job due to the economic uncertainty following the Covid-19 pandemic, so the programme would surely help these graduates make up for the lack of employment.
On the programme today, he said about 600 residents in the area had benefited from free technical and vocational education and training workshops provided for various fields such as electrical, robotics, photography, entrepreneurship and culinary arts, among others. — Bernama
