Students and members of NGO Going to School display their projects. Picture by Jai Prakash

Non-government organisation Going to School has proved there is no age to be enterprising, as it is opening up school students to the world of entrepreneurship.

The NGO in its journey might have just motivated 13-year-old Sanjay Kumar to the world of business. The Class IX student of Sri Raghunath Hindu High School in Patna City was “thrilled” to find that business ran in his genes — his great-great-grandfather had a garment business.

Sanjay is only one among the students of 200 government high schools who have learned about entrepreneurship skills from Going to School, which signed a memorandum of understanding with Bihar in January. It has reached 200 government high schools and plans to reach another 200 by the end of October. Under the agreement, the NGO will help students of 1,000 high schools learn about entrepreneurship skill.

A set of storybooks brought out by the NGO is being given to Class IX students every week. The students’ job is to read new stories that educate them on skills and then bring alive the same in an entrepreneurship project.

Two of the books presented to the students are Vansh Vriksha and Jaane Kyon. The first book tells the story of a girl who requests her grandmother to make a swing for her. Once the girl is asked to make the swing on her own and she pleads her inability to, the grandmother goes on to tell her about the achievements of her forefathers in different fields. Jaane Kyon again tells the story of a village girl who visits her uncle in the city to find several problems in the city.

From Vansh Vriksha, the students were assigned to find out if anybody in their family was an entrepreneur and the difficulties they faced. Going to School trainer Abha Kumari said: “Through this project, the children would be able to dispel their fear of becoming an entrepreneur because of the risks involved.”

The activity given after the story of Jaane Kyon helps students develop a fighting spirit, said Abha. “The students had to find problems at home or locality and try to solve them and make a project based on it. Social, economic, environment and infrastructure-based problems were identified under this project and we got many interesting projects from the students. One of the students solved his family’s financial problems inspired by Jaane Kyon,” said Abha.