Shillong, Mar 30: Small Industries Development Bank of India (SIDBI), the country’s principal financial institution for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSME), has in-principle agreed to support Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama (RKM), Sohra, Meghalaya for setting up of an Alternate Livelihood Centre to be named as “Swavalamban Alternate Livelihood Unit for The EAST” (SALUTE) at the RKM centre at Sohra to run vocational courses on weaving, tailoring, fashion designing, knitting, embroidery, product development among others to provide alternate livelihood opportunities to the drop out students, women and tribals from the North-Eastern States.
The priority target segments shall be school dropouts, skilled but unemployed, unemployed needing skills, migrants during covid, unserved/underserved segments etc.
V. Satya Venkata Rao, DMD, SIDBI and the Maharaj of RKM at Sohra who are entering 100 years of existence jointly announced the SALUTE initiative. Maharaj mentioned that supporting the initiative brings firm resolve of SIDBI and RKM to institutionalise the swavalamban culture in state and north east.
He mentioned that RKM runs 77 schools and running Co-branded skilling courses shall mainstream the school dropouts through swavalamban. During the occasion, Rao said that it is an initiative of SIDBI under its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to give boost to entrepreneurship development and also to support sustainable emergence of youth from north east wherein they explore and adapt to alternate livelihood opportunities in the North-East Region.
On the occasion, Maharaj briefed about the activities being undertaken by the Ashrama and the achievements of the existing Swavalamban Centre already running with the help from SIDBI for skill upgradation of women for tailoring and textile design.
He also thanked SIDBI for support for providing an Ambulance fitted with lifesaving equipments during the peak of Covid and the facility has helped the Ashrama to provide timely medical facilities to few hundred needy persons from far off places of the State.
